I have been trying to write a post for over a week about turning forty. Yet every time I reach down the well is…not dry, but weird. I am still in this season where I feel like I am holding my emotions at arm’s length. I worry if I get sad then I won’t stop crying and if I get angry then I’ll want to burn everything down. Not really a great way to go through life! Because I would really like to move through life without flinching at myself; to own the courage that landed me in this place, to have the joy of God’s salvation restored to me.
Human beings are funny creatures in that we put far too much stock in numbers that end with fives and zeroes. As I approached 40, I thought about the other times that I entered a new decade. When I was 10, I was still a kid and that’s a pretty good gig. When I was 20, I was discovering myself in college and starting to fall in love with the woman who would become my wife. When I was 30, we had recently had our second son and I was nearing completing my M. Div. in seminary. Each milestone was a marker of progress and the border of a new frontier. At 40? Well, I’m semi-employed and staring down a chasm of uncertainty deeper and darker than any I’ve encountered in my adult life.
Bible nerd that I am, I have been preoccupied with the Fortieth Psalm for some time. “I waited patiently for the Lord; He inclined to me and heard my cry. He drew me up from the desolate pit, out of the miry bog, and set my feet upon a rock, making my steps secure.” There is a hope there that resonates deep within me. Of course then I also hear Bono plaintively wail “How long to sing this song?” and I wonder that too.
In Falling Upward, Richard Rohr writes, “All that each of us can do is live in the now that is given. We cannot rush the process; we can only carry out each stage of our lives to the best of our ability.” How long? Who knows? Now is what we have and so the task is to wait patiently and give my best in the meantime.
And also there are so many good things in the now. Our family is healthy. I love EA more and more each day and she thankfully still loves and likes me. I have a good relationship with my parents and siblings and their families. Though we lost a community, there is a fellowship of friends that have reached out to us and told us that we are loved. We have a roof over our heads. I got to see my folks on my birthday and have my mom’s homemade cookie cake. I eked out more miles running in May than I have in many months. The boys and I are going to see Across the Spider-Verse tomorrow and we will certainly eat more popcorn than we should. As someone reminded me yesterday, Christ still loves me and what I’ve done still bears fruit. There is still much good here.
Even though 40 is not what I thought it would be, I will wait, do my best, try not to flinch at myself, and trust that God will help me find more solid footing. How long to sing this song? I don’t know, but I will sing.
