I Don't Ever Want to be Okay Again or; Tomorrow I Turn 57

Shook up right good.  That's what my 56th year's been.  Nothing.  And, by that,  I .mean. nothing....is what I had in mind.  I sensed a year of change ahead, for sure.  I had no idea what that meant.  Here's what it meant.  Two more of my six kids joined the one already gone and ended up far, far away in a land I could not afford to go visit.  That meant, half of my kids were geographically farther than my arms or my pocketbook could reach.

It meant that I became a mother in law for the very first time to a young man I barely knew and wholly loved from the start.  Because my girl loved him and he took the time to learn her and made her happy and promised to stand guard for the rest of his life.  A few months later, it meant that  I would get a new name come right around Christmas; "Nana".  My heart has trouble even wrapping itself around this.  How will that feel?  I have no frame of reference to fit that into so I try to build a new one and become that older woman who looks at all little people in grocery stores with a wistful look in her eye and imagines that is my grandchild.  It feels strange and foreign to have the thought and I shake myself back awake.

Being 56 meant I finally got what it meant to accept grace from God and from others.  I sat down and made friends with it and wove it into the fabric of my encounters with those I met.  I could love whether they loved me back or not, whether I agreed with them or not.  I found a way to set others free and walk free myself.  I served them the same grace I'd been given.  Because just because a person doesn't love me?  Doesn't mean I'm not loved.  This, I have learned.

I figured out some things don't have answers all nice and acceptable.  That there's wrestling to be done with what I see happening.  I don't much like some things and the way they turn out.  And God doesn't tell me the why's.  It turns out the "rest of the story" most times comes a page at a time; nothing more or less.  And trust has begun to bloom that seems reckless crazy. I'd laugh at myself if I wasn't me and tell me I'm nuts.

I decided this year to wear my own skin, more pliable as I age though it is, and wear it well and out and thin and let it not harden but be stretched thin to keep up with my arms as they reach out to the world I used to shield myself from.  I look in the mirror and feel a spirit young and slappy silly with new found dreams smiling out from more...ahem...laugh lines then I remember.  I don't fear sickness or death like I used to because I know it's not my end and until I am dead I will be smiling at the wind even when it kicks up big and feels like a tornado.

I had my boy put me under the water this year to stake my claim that all things old have passed away and behold I have been made new by the One Who created me.  And in this, my 57th year, what comes or goes, I call out to that reckless, raging fury that is the love of God and ask  Him not to let me settle again for being "okay".  Just "okay" isn't good enough anymore.  Keep me in that uncomfortable grace that forces my eyes up.