Blog Therapy Session

Today I feel old........and out of shape......and wrinkly.......and well......old. What makes me feel that way, you say? You might be sorry you asked.
I have had a delayed reaction to this whole 40 thing. At least I think that must be what is wrong with me. What else would explain it? I have been in a funk for about 2 weeks now. I look at myself in the mirror (first mistake) and think what is that ugly spot on my nose? Oh yeah, that's the spot the doctor told me is sun damage. It screams, "middle age" to me. And, why do I look so "mom-like"? Not young and fresh, but tired and frumpy. My new strategy to dealing with middle age is to not look at the mirror anymore. What do you think?
Joey started his first high school sport this week, football. Watching him leave the house on his bike with his posse of friends to go to practice made me realize how fast this parenting thing is going. I am not a new parent anymore, no I am what I like to call seasoned. And, seasoned very well, in this parenting thing, I am. Jessi is 9, and all I can think is, GASP, she is halfway to 18. In two years, Hannah will join Joey at the high school, and I will have two in high school and one in junior high. Old.
Last night I visited with my sister in law, who is just getting ready to move her second daughter to college AND, her first daughter is about to make her a grandma for the first time. As we talked about how surreal it all seems, I felt......old. I am about to become a GREAT Aunt. Whoa....
This coming spring Dave and I will celebrate our 20 year anniversary. It doesn't seem that long. 20 years....
All of these things, plus a few more, make me feel my age. 40. Should I feel so sober, so nostalgic, so sad? By no means! What abundant blessings I have experienced and continue to have. I have more than enjoyed watching my kids grow up, and they still have a ways to go yet. I'm not done quite yet. :) There is still alot of mothering for me to do.
And there is something positive to the aging process, I have found. The older I get the more comfortable I get with who God made me to be. Those things I always tried to change about myself, don't need to be changed. Now, granted I can always work on being a better, more loving and God-filled person, but the innate traits that make me unique....I have accepted. I always wished I was outgoing, the life of the party, the adventurous one. Those I will never be. But, age has given me wisdom to embrace myself as God intended and use it for His glory.
So, that leaves me with the physical part, that person I see in the mirror. How can I embrace that? No amount of money, creams or plastic surgery is going to stop it.....I am getting old.
Give me a few more days of this hole I'm in, and I think I'll be able to crawl out. When I do, I think I'll invent a new kind of mirror that looks at the inside, that part of me that isn't aging, the part of me that is being renewed each day by my Heavenly Father. I trust even though my outward body is getting older, He is making me into something beautiful on the inside.