Dear 40

I’m celebrating my birthday this month. This should be fun, knowing a special day for me is coming. But this year, it feels different. It’s weighted. It’s filled with expectation because it’s a milestone birthday—one that lives in lore. One that is talked about being so far away when you’re young and so young when you’re older. That’s right—I’m turning forty.

When I was in elementary school, planning my future of having twin girls by the age of sixteen, there was no difference between the ages of “old.” You could have asked me about forty or ninety-five—it all felt ancient. An age I’d someday reach, but likely with a walker and grey hair. I might as well have to put my teeth in to eat and have someone else wipe my butt. “Old” was the dark void, empty and bleak. An inky sky filled with nothing at all. Any age over eighteen was included.

As I grew older, I realized forty and ninety definitely were not the same things. But even so, I still had ideas of what it meant to be forty. Ideas, it now seems, that were just as out of touch with reality.

In college my girlfriends and I would talk in vague terms of what the future might hold, but we all understood a certain unspoken expectation that we would—of course—have obtained. Forty should be filled with all the things that come with a thriving life because by forty we would clearly have figured things out enough to have arrived at “thriving”. Turning forty would be accompanied by a great job, maybe CEO status. I would have the wardrobe of the independently wealthy woman I’d be (clothing purchased at Lululemon and Nordstrom and Saks), fine yoga pants I’d sport over my rocking six pack for the casual days off and a wardrobe made to look like Meryl Streep in The Devil Wears Prada for all those fancy business meetings. I’d be nearing empty-nesterhood like my parents before me. I’d drive a Mercedes and fly business class. If nothing else, I’d at least have the answers to all of life’s burning questions because that is what happens when you get older.

Maybe I wouldn’t have a ridiculous amount of money, but I’d be healthy, comfortable, stable, nice house, happy children, and very middle class successful at the least. Certainly this is what forty would look like.

And yet. Here I am, toes on the edge of the threshold, the door to my thirties shutting a tiny bit more with each passing second, forcing me towards my fifth decade of life whether or not I’m ready for it. And it’s probably not remotely surprising to anyone reading this that my experience of forty is thus far nothing like I’d imagined.

Right now, forty looks like working as a bedside nurse—the same job I’ve done for nearly seventeen years—a job that doesn’t consist of pencil skirts and designer blouses but of glorified baggy pajamas which are at the daily risk of getting defiled by some sort of bodily excrement, none of which is mine. Instead of drawing near empty-nesterhood, I have a three year old in the throes of night potty training. She’s one of two of my children who haven’t even started school. “Empty nester” feels as far away as forty did in my childhood. I wear workout clothes from Marshalls which my kids use on the regular as their private Kleenex. And don’t even get me started on what I’ve been seeing in the mirror. It’s a battle ground between my natural brown hair and the stubborn wiry white twigs taking over—a battle my brown hair is losing with ever increasing rapidity. My husband’s beard now has a serious identity crisis and has started popping up all over my upper lip. I’m almost afraid to kiss him lest any more get directionally-challenged and jump ship from his face to mine.

Then there’s my daughter’s favorite part of my body: my stomach, whom she’s lovingly named “squishy.” She likes to squeeze it between her fingers like Play-Doh and laugh about the way it feels, like I’m her walking Squishmallow. Ironically, it’s just the same way I used to play with my mother’s, never once imagining the sheer impossibility that such a stomach would one day belong to me. There’s a crack in the ceiling of our living room and our fireplace is taken apart as my husband is mid-remodel.

With forty pushing into my life whether I’m ready or not, it was easy to start to see all the things I’m not, focus on the things I don’t have, the way life hasn’t met my childhood or even early adult expectations. It’s begun to feel like the black void of my aging future has grown fingers which are attempting to pull me down and suffocate me in the face of unmet—and completely unrealistic—expectations. But if all these unrealistic expectations were a list of what forty wasn’t, then what makes forty what it is? What makes me at forty? I couldn’t help but think about all the years that had come before. And what each decade had lovingly gifted me.

In my single digits, I learned how to walk and talk, ride a bike and swim, how to read and write. Each simple act so easily taken for granted was learned through trial and error, a thousand tries which finally lead to the miracle of doing. A lesson easily forgotten and yet so incredible to watch in my own children. These basic life skills laid the foundation of passions I can now pursue. They allow me to enjoy time with my family, succeed in my career, and experience the beauty of life. They are the basis of my life, learned when I was too young to remember and just old enough now to finally appreciate.

In my teenage years I learned who I was and how to let go of trying to be someone I wasn’t. They were awkward and hard, but also laid the foundation of an identity I’m proud of, an identity without strings (or at least very few of them) to the social and societal expectations of others. They taught me both who I was and who I wanted to be. Truly a gift that keeps on giving.

In my twenties I traveled the world, learned more about other cultures and languages, learned how both big and small the world really is and how my life fits as a tiny piece into the jigsaw of life. I learned how important I am—and also how insignificant. I learned to see the importance of each life, no matter how overlooked they were by the world.

In my thirties, I learned how to live for someone else, how to lay down my life in the service of another—or three tiny “others.” I have learned what it means to be a wife, to merge my life and ambitions with another human being. I have learned what it means not just to feel love, but to commit to living it out every single day, even when the feelings aren’t there. I have learned what it means to walk through fire and come out the other side, more battered and broken and scarred, but also more on my knees, bowing before Jesus, the only one who can get any of us through this life. And I’ve learned I can come through those fires stronger, softer, and hopefully better than before, in spite of praying I never have to walk through them again.

And so, as forty continues to creep forward second by second, as Time continues to push the door to my thirties ever so slightly shut, forcing me out of one decade and into another, I want to celebrate all I’ve learned, lived through, and survived. I want to celebrate the fact that, even though I see an aging, overly tired, squishy-bodied mother, my husband sees a beautiful woman he still can’t keep his hands off of. My children see a mother they can run to for playtime, for support, for help. They see a woman who will bandage their scrapes, rejoice in their creations, and sing them to sleep when they are having a hard time going to bed. They see a safe place of refuge, a solver of all life’s problems, the shaper of their little worlds. And on a rare occasion, even tell me I’m “the best mommy in the world!” And as for all those scars—both seen and unseen? They mean I can sit next to another person whose world is shattered and say, “I know. And I’m so sorry.” I can tell them they, too, can survive. And if they need anything, I just might have something to offer, even if it’s nothing more than a shoulder to cry on from someone who’s been there too.

So here’s to a new decade. A decade where I no longer have to potty train anyone. A decade where, as much as it breaks my mom heart, all my children will finally start school and I’ll have the first seven-hours-five-days-a-week of free time that I’ve had in over a decade. Here’s to going on family vacations and (dare I say it?) actually enjoying them. Here’s to pouring into things I love, like hikes and memory-making and writing. Here’s to another decade of marriage to a man who still thinks the world of me, loves me deeply, and finds me totally irresistible—beard hair, squishy belly, grey hairs, and all.

Here’s to knowing who I am and being okay with who I’m not.

Here’s to appreciating all I know and to deeply understanding how much I have left to learn. And here’s to creating—writing, making bread, building imaginary worlds with little minds—simply because the act of making something nourishing and beautiful out of nothing nourishes my soul. Here’s to my ever-aging body which allows me to hug my babies, search out fall colors on trails that wind around white-tipped rivers, and continues to let me live. Here’s to an abundance of life ahead, when for so long forty always seemed like the beginning of the end.

Here’s to all the struggles I’ve walked through which have softened my sharper edges, showed me how beautifully insignificant I am, and brought me to the feet of Jesus, who forever waits with open arms when I come crawling back. Here’s to memories yet to be made and traditions yet to be created. Here’s to watching my babies grow, to reveling over their successes and holding them up through their failures. Here’s to the life yet to be lived, the friends to be met, the beautiful moments still to be had. Here’s to the million tiny moments which make up these long days, short seasons, collected like stars—each one seemingly insignificant, but when added together over a lifetime create a masterpiece out of the darkness.

Here’s to you, forty. I can’t wait to see what you bring.

Happy Birthday!