Good Lordy, She’s turning 40!

Ten years ago, my friend Judith leaned out of her car window and shouted, “Hey, I heard you turn thirty today!  You will love your thirties.  You finally get to enjoy who you are!”  I was standing on the curb at preschool pick-up with one child in a stroller awaiting another to come bounding from the building. I was overweight and worn out.  I resented my work-all-the-time husband and I awoke many mornings planning the bedtime routine for that night. The idea that something was going to change that would allow me to enjoy myself in this life of responsibly and exhaustion was hard to believe.  But, Judith was right! Although the last ten years have had hiccups, a little thyroid medicine corrected the constant tiredness, some therapy and a lot of work sorted out the resentment, and the kids turned out to be my greatest pleasure. Go figure! Here are a few other random things I know about myself now that I didn’t know ten years ago.

Bitterness looks ugly on me.

My husband has a few pet names for me, and one that hits close to home describes the ugly seeds of resentment I sometimes let take root in my soul.  He calls me Total Recall.  Trust me, if you wronged me twelve years ago I can describe what we were wearing when you said what you said that changed everything.  I can quote you verbatim, and I add emphasis when I repeat the story to show how wrong you were.  I wake up in the mornings and remember things that happened that I still have not made peace with and I feel the anger and hatred all over again before I even throw back the comforter.  But no more.

Now I welcome the amnesia that getting older brings.  When I see you, I want to see a fresh start.  This change from bitterness to grace was not (and still isn’t) easy for me, but one major habit change has made it possible: I’ve learned to forgive myself.  In the way that math of the soul never really makes sense, when I added A, let myself off the hook, to B, recount all the wrongs ever done to me, they equaled C, forgive everybody.  Sometimes when I realize I am still licking a wound and enough time has passed that I should have moved on, I have to force myself to examine my heart and find something to accept forgiveness for.  And then boom, it doesn’t seem so hard to forgive that thing I’ve been carrying around against another person. In Christian lingo I hear, He forgave me, so how can I not forgive her?   Another helpful tool is to realize that I have no idea what events or experiences led a person to that point when we had our misunderstanding.  Context is everything, and often it’s missing during confusing, hurtful situations.  Now I am trying to resist my knee-jerk go-bitter reaction, and choose forgiveness and grace instead.  And whaddaya know? I look younger and more well rested for it!

Get myself to church.

Here’s a video that best expresses my churchy advice.  (You’re welcome! I knew you’d like it!) I finally accepted that this side of death, I am unlikely to have all my faith-related issues sorted.   I will dance and spin through and around tough questions with regularity.  I will bang my head on the wall, throw my hands up and shout “I dunno!” and sometimes throw the Bible or concordance across the room in frustration.  But, now I see that gathering with other believers and seekers is the best thing I can do to sort through those things.  All the other good-for-Sundays kinds of things – brunch with friends, sports games for the kiddoes, sleeping in, biking with the family, cleaning out the garage, surfing the internet – will not challenge me to keep thinking, growing or engaging with the questions.  On a given Sunday in my forties, you can find my unsure-of-much-but-going-with-my-hunch-self warming a pew. Is it a perfect church with the exact theology I can sign on to?  Nope, not even close.

But each week I stand and let the words wash over me, I believe in God, the Father almighty, Creator of heaven and earth.

I walk forward and take the manna of communion into my mouth, This is my body given for you. Do this in remembrance of me.

I stand and sing Here is love, vast as the ocean, and for a moment I can feel myself buoyed by all that is good, filled with hope and full of love to offer to those around me.

Strangers turn to me and say Peace be with you.  And peace enters in.

I have to love my body no matter its shape or size.

Here’s the dealio: It’s a must, and no one is going to do it for me.   In my profession I see all types of bodies in their underwear and after helping a thousand or so women find clothes, I can attest to an epidemic of self-loathing in our ranks.  The size sixteen wishes she were just a twelve and the size zero wishes she were better proportioned.  The small-chested woman goes on and on about how her friends can fill out a top better, and the endowed has hated her boobs since puberty.  The woman with “perfect” measurements looks in the mirror and obsesses about her hair and won’t try on anything else until she adds lipstick.  I’ve heard with my own ears, “I hate myself so much,” said quietly while gazing in the mirror.  It’s called “fat talk,” this female bonding ritual we do to connect. No stranger to this angst, I too can pick apart my body piece-by-piece and name what I wish were different.  After a fashion show a few years ago, five women were discussing the new clothing line we’d just seen.  Turned out those of us with big thighs had only stared at the models’ thighs the entire time, and the women who struggle with their waist lines had been obsessing over the flat tummies on the runway.  None of us had actually seen the clothes for what they were because we were too busy comparing ourselves and coming up short. But no more.

Girlfriends try to help, but I am a master at deflecting compliments.  “You look fabulous, Joy!”  “Ugh, I hate the way this shows my middle,” I’ll respond. Fat Talk.  But no more.

The husband makes attempts to be supportive and loving, but I am so suspicious that I discount anything he says. (Do I think he is lying?  That he just wants action? That he, too, wishes I were a leggy blonde? What keeps me from believing that he finds me beautiful?) When he compliments me I’ll roll my eyes with a you’ve got to be kidding signal. But no more.

Our culture is really lousy at helping me feel good. Seems no matter where I look – at magazines, movies or even in the school drop-off line – I encounter desperation to look younger and thinner.  A friend in her fifties told me recently, “It’s a scientific fact that a woman looks her best at thirty.”  What a defeating idea to believe!

So, it appears the job’s on me.  In addition to offering this body some nutritious meals and physical activity, I need to hear it being loved as well.

I look at my size nine feet and say thank you for holding me up all these years.  I know you hate high heels and I don’t blame you.  They hurt!  You’ve walked me wherever I’ve wanted to go and whether in ballet flats or doc martins you always keep me going.  Thank you.

I look at these thighs and calves and say it’s ok that you aren’t the best fit for skinny jeans or that the zippers of tall leather boots usually won’t go all the way up– you’ve moved and carried me around the world and I am grateful.

It’s gets harder, but now I can touch my soft torso and say thank you for carrying two babies and helping me bend and lift all of these years.  You’ve done a great job of keeping all the limbs connected and my whole body centered.  You let me know when you are full and when you are hungry. I apologize that I don’t do sit-ups often enough for you, but somehow you still maintain enough strength to keep me upright.

And these arms of mine are so useful at hugging my friends and pulling the husband close and also carrying groceries for my family, so I say thank you for all the lugging and hugging you do.

Finally I reach my head and I toss my graying hair out of my eyes and peer close into the mirror and whisper, You are beautiful.

That’s the job of loving myself.  Lather, rinse – and do it often.

I need to loosen my grip.

Yup, I’m a control freak and operate as if the more invested and engaged I get with something, the more I can turn it into what I want it to be.  These last ten years have taught me to take a step back and let the thing be what it is supposed to be and stop trying to dictate or invest in particular outcomes.

Health – I’ve seen yearned-for infants, twenty-year-olds on the brink of launching, active and involved fifty-year-old fathers, and ancient beloved grandparents all pass away.  None of those deaths came easily, and no amount of my wishing them away made any difference.  I will have my health and life for some amount of time and am determined to cherish and honor it.  I have no promises about tomorrow.

Money – I’ve lived in abundance and in worry.  No longer will either define my worth or my outlook on life.  I agree that money can make life easier, but it brings the possibility of a crapload of dysfunction along with it.  Beyond providing the basic necessities (for us this means housing, food and education) it doesn’t do much for self-confidence, family love, or identity building.  I say, Easy come, easy go, Miss Money.  I’ll enjoy you while you are with me, but I won’t grieve very long when you take a vacation from my bank account.

Friendship – I am wired to need girlfriends and I thrive on female energy flowing through me, helping me self-examine and guiding me toward my future-me.  I stand by the advice I heard many years ago: “Look for the best in a friend rather than a best friend.”  Though some women come close, I don’t need any single friend to be my perfect soul mate.  If I start measuring her by a standard in my head, she’ll certainly fail.  When women come into my life – and new ones appear all the time – I try to figure out what part of her is the best fit for what part of me.  Should we connect about mothering, wife-ing, walking, faith, books, travel, or will she challenge me to grow in a new direction?  While I am trying to discover what is a piece in her to fit with a piece in me, I am also trying to offer my best.   This approach guarantees that an amorphous cloud of friendship holds me at all times. I still struggle with rejection, though.  Even I can feel like a left-out middleschooler while scrolling through face book and looking at party shots that do not include me, or watching two women giggle in a way that neither does with me.  Those pangs of exclusion serve as a reminder to peel my fingers back again and recognize that for whatever reason – insecurity, mis-reading cues, rough patches of neediness – I’ve begun to cling too hard to that particular friendship.

My Children – Well, I wish I could add them to this list, but I am still learning to hold their sweet souls in an open palm.  I know they are on loan from God to me, I know their lives do not reflect my identity, and I know that if I do my job well, they will find their own path and it will be headed away from me.  I am still processing this one.

I can’t wait to see how life treats me now that I will be a lady in her forties.  I hear that all sorts of fun things will happen to my body.  I’ve already had the pleasure of experiencing a few personal summers, and I can see that the rumor about eyebrows disappearing and showing up on chins might have some truth to it. Over the next ten years I’ll be saying goodbye to two kids as they fly the coop and I hope I am able to do it with equipoise.  (Current trends indicate I might have a rough time with this, but I am betting on grace to reign when needed.)

Whatever heads my way, you can be sure I’ll be writing about it, because that’s another thing I discovered during the last decade.  I love to write!  Stick around; it’s going to be a fun ride.

Photo credz

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