Turning 40 is around the corner for me in the coming year. I’ve never been one to lament the “big birthdays” (My 30th was a big party involving a grill, a DJ, and a giant Twister board - some of you were there!), but this one is giving me pause. It feels like I am coming around a bend in the trail, and I’ve found an awesome but unexpected rock outcropping where I can see both the path I’ve just hiked and the path extending ahead. I am a little surprised at how far I’ve already come and how much is behind me. I want to linger a bit right here.
Even with the “protective layer” of my parents’ generation, I am grasping my own mortality in a way I didn’t get it before. At the family reunion, my uncle said, “I am the oldest of the Swartzes!” and I realize I’m not so far behind. I see the ripples of the choices that my parents, grandparents and even great-grandparents made playing out, passing through the generations in a way you can only notice with the perspective of time - especially choices about their marriage partners, finances, vocations, and ways of serving God. I realize now that my own choices have the same import. My own father died young at 40, but I realize now that as young as he was, he still left a legacy of faith and love for his family. As well, I am grappling with a caregiver role for my mother, and this is a constant lesson in trusting God that she will have enough - money, health, support - over the next however many years, and believing that, novice that I am, I can actually be an instrument of God’s care in the situation.
Yet some (I hope many) chapters of my life remain unwritten. Looking at 40, I still struggle with God about who is holding the pen of my life. But a new, almost involuntary prayer has begun to emerge for me that I find myself repeating without even knowing it. It’s not very eloquent, and usually it comes out like, “OK, God, use me. Please do what you want in this situation!” This is not easy for me, and I fight it. But I’m trying to yield more and more control, and I think I am starting to glimpse a wider view than I’ve ever been able to see from my path before.
Thank you for this beautiful reflection. I too am nearing 40 and it’s good to think about the out cropping where we can see behind and ahead. Thank you
Thanks for sharing this, for a lot of us, 40 seems to far off. It’s nice to get some perspective. And you certainly don’t look close to 40. I thought you were 31.