A New Age

I was sort of waiting for the panic to set in.

When the calendar turned to reveal August the 1^st, the countdown was on, the big 4-0 was just 31 days away. This is it people, the last month in my thirties. The day before my birthday, I was reminded it was the last Sunday of my 30's during the last weekend in my 30's, and that night on Facebook, it was the last two hours of my 30's. It humorously felt like I was on some sort of prison sentence countdown. Doesn’t matter how much you wish or hope or dream, the minutes keep ticking away and there is no grabbing hold of that 3 and refusing to let go. Cue panic, chaos, and living it up because once you reach August 31st, the decade begins that starts with the number 4! 

But honestly, I woke up Sunday and felt like me, and when I woke up Monday morning, I felt like….well me. Looking in the mirror, 39-year-old me and 40-year-old me could pass as twins. Same red hair with several white strands mixed in as artful highlights by the Master Creator. Same teeth, all mine. Pretty sure my freckles numbered the same yesterday as they do today but when you own 469,232 of them, you tend to forget if that one about an inch and a half below your right elbow was there last week or you got it at the park on Sunday.

It’s amazing is it not, that as a child, you keep daydreaming forward in your mind. You want to hit 10 so you can claim double digits finally, you want to be 16 so you can finally learn how to drive, 18 marks graduation and being an “adult,’ and 21 lets you hand over your I.D. at the bar for an overpriced bottle of lousy beer.

There's always a better birthday that you're waiting for. I can’t wait to get to the next milestone! To be older! To do more things! Freedom lies just around the bend if you could only make the years go faster, you could reach the destination sooner! Ugh, come on time!

And then with an ear piercing squeal of slamming breaks and the smell of rubber burning, we hit 30 and birthdays turn into the never ending 29^th birthday joke. It's your birthday? You must be turning 29. *wink, wink, nudge, nudge* Could someone explain what was so great about 29? Honestly, it had its high points and low points, but I’m not begging to revisit any time soon.

Nevertheless, it feels like 30 is the magic number that we begin looking back at wistfully, trying to return to where we used to be. As if we missed the guideline on aging in the manual on life that said rush to this point then firmly plant your roots and hold on for dear life because you don’t want to age anymore! Getting older equals body pain, wrinkly skin, complaining about whatever suits your mood and all your meals get moved up around 3 hours. 

I don’t know, maybe I’ll get to a point in my life where I say, “it was so much better when I was younger,” but I’m hoping it isn’t 40. True, I have zero clue as to why God found fit to allow women my age to grow random hairs in the middle of the night that stick out of your neck and you just cannot be at peace until you’ve located the tweezers and eradicated the hairy invader, but I like “40” me a whole lot more than “20” me.

20-year-old me wasn’t real happy with God, had pretty much decided she had better things to do and set out on achieving the things everyone wants – money, job advancement, fun, stuff, etc. She spent years putting that first and wound up with much of nothing. We moved and the job ended. The stuff equated to debt that required years to get rid of, and when I moved, the shallow friendships built primarily on crazy girl nights fizzled out. The me of the past may have had what she thought was “fun” at the time, but it was really a space in time that consisted of short highs of personal pleasure that didn’t last and had little substance.

Fast forward to 40-year-old me. It is true that over the years since turning 20, I’ve lost both my mother and father, and it is also true that I’ve watched my husband lose his job twice. I opened my home to my father-in-law who stayed with us until he died of cancer. My husband was diagnosed with a never ending illness, kids struggled in school, and a host of other moments that still bring tears to my eyes when I think back on them.

But…

I’ve also traveled across the globe to love on the sweetest people you’ll ever meet and I've had the joy of listening to children’s laughter mixed in with words of a foreign tongue. I’ve got friends in different time zones who amaze me with the way they serve God. I’m surrounded by men and woman who inspire and challenge me to live each and every day intentionally, not wanting to press the fast forward button, but content to sit right here in this moment. I realize the value of having a husband of 21 years who lays beside me in bed and talks about life and who still gives me back rubs. I’ve got an 18-year-old who is pulling away from my nest, and yet, there’s a beauty to being able to let go of some of the smothering and just being able to enjoy time with him. His younger brother crossed the threshold into high school this year and his younger sister isn’t far behind. There’s a tiny redhead who calls me Nana that watches cartoons with me on Saturday afternoons, snuggled under her Frozen blanket and we take the best naps together. And somewhere out there are a few more faces who I’ll hopefully call son or daughter that I haven’t even met yet.

Is my body not quite what it used to be? Well yeah, it’s been living 40 years. That’s 14,600 days or 350,400 hours. It’s put in the time, it’s allowed to sag and creak a little. Grace, 40-year-old body, I didn’t take care of you quite like I should, but you still give good hugs and you get me where I need to go. We’re doing just fine.

In the middle of all the wonderful things in my life, are there still moments when the money runs short, the test results are scary, someone in my house makes a poor decision, or the phone call means that it’s time to say goodbye to another loved one? Of course there are. Age doesn't equal a magic get out of tough moments free pass. But 40-year-old me has a support network that will pray and love and comfort that 20-year-old me just didn’t have that.  

God’s a whole lot bigger than I thought He was all those years ago. He really is in control and He’s really seen all my days, no surprises for Him. He knows I’m going to mess up but forgiveness is in endless supply, and He really does love me enough to want good for me even when it feels painfully bad.

So, the whole big birthday thing? Well, I can’t say I’ve really gotten used to carrying the mantle of the number 40. Like a jacket that seems a little large, I still feel like I did last Thursday when I was still 39 and I just don't quite fit into this new piece of my identity. It’s hard to wrap my mind around the fact that thirties are gone and for the next ten years I will be a 40-something.

But God has this thing about changing a person. He isn’t one to leave you stagnant, frozen in a moment, a finished product just waiting for the end to come to pass. So, who knows what changes the 40-somethings will hold. It’s kind of exciting and hopeful, getting past the yuck of the past and walking towards the better. (Not to mention the 40th birthday party was fantastic! Goes down as one of my best days ever. Who knows, maybe the 50th one will be even better!)   

IF: Equip, Day 3, Nehemiah 2:9-20

If you'd like to read today's passage of scripture, please click here.

Finally, we're getting somewhere, right? Nehemiah has packed up his bags with the king's favor shown by the letters in his hand, and he's on the road back to Jerusalem. We're gonna see some action! Bricks are going to be laid, the people will be on the road to recovery. Nope.

Looking at this scripture, it doesn't really seem like we make it very far at all. We're still waiting to start the rebuild...is that a theme I'm supposed to be getting in this? Waiting? I hate waiting. I am the queen of impatience.

What I take away from this passage:

• v.11 - Nehemiah's finally back in Jerusalem, in fact for whatever reason, scripture points out that he's been there for 3 days. Now, I can't say for sure how things played out back then, but when I look back at the scripture prior to this passage, and in v. 9, Nehemiah is traveling officers of the army and letters of the king. Anyone else think this had to gather at least a little bit of attention? This wasn't just a man on a donkey traveling the countryside. Makes you wonder what his arrival was like. Did the people know who he was? That he was a Jew? Did they immediately start asking him questions? Had the rumor mill run ahead of him and news of the cup bearer's return reached Jerusalem before he did? I want to know what went on in those first three days!
• v. 12-13,16 - In these verses we see that Nehemiah gets up and goes out in the night to survey the city. Personally, I'm a night owl girl. In fact, no matter the season, I have let my dog out for the night and just stood on the back porch looking up at the sky. Living out in the country, I find it peaceful to just let the stillness, the gentle sounds of nature, the cool air brings inner peace. The world may still be in turmoil, but for a moment, I'm just a child of the Maker of the Universe standing in the light of the moon He placed in the sky, and for a moment, problems don't seem quite so large. I can imagine that had it been the heat of day, Nehemiah wouldn't have had the chance to truly get a look at the work to be done uninterrupted. Also, we see Nehemiah's ability to be patient and to show restraint in that he hasn't given in to the desire to rush around and tell the people, "Look, I've come so we can start fixing this wall! Don't be sad! There's hope!" If the people were as dismayed as we read at the beginning of the book, I would have understood immediately wanting to bring them something to lift their spirits. And yet, Nehemiah "told no one what my God had put on my heart to do for Jerusalem." 
• v.14 - The one thing that caught my attention in this singular verse is that his animal didn't have room to pass. For me, it just paints a visual picture of how great the destruction of the wall could have been that an animal made to travel rocky terrain couldn't pass through. Thinking back to pictures I've seen of rubble left behind after a natural disaster or during a war, I can only imagine that after being freed from their exiled captivity, Israel returns to the place God has set aside for them and just sees this mess. The wall around the city in heaps of rubble and ruin, the protection it offered gone. It must have been so upsetting and disheartening, their spirits must have been torn back down by what they came home to.
• v.16 -  Nehemiah clarifies once more in v.16, "And the officials did not know where I had gone or what I was doing, and I  had not yet told the Jews, the priests, the nobles, the officials, and the rest who were to do the work." Again, I am halted by the restraint Nehemiah showed in keeping things to himself. 
• v.17-20 - Finally, the cat's out of the bag. Nehemiah has shared with the people the plan to rebuild what was destroyed. And so sets the stage for what I already know is coming up more than once in the chapters to come - God's work going forth and opposition that arises.  The people finally have a godly leader, they have backing from the king, they have started to prepare themselves and have "strengthened their hands for the good work," (v.18) and still, someone has to come along and start trouble, spitting out ugly words of negativity meant to stop them in their tracks. I've been there. And there are times when I have kept right on moving forward, and there are times when I have stopped, thought about it, and decided maybe those voices have a point. Maybe they are right. But Nehemiah, he stands firm and fires back with "The God of heaven will make us prosper, and we his servants will arise and build..."(v.20)

I don't believe God has stopped calling His people forward to do His work. In a world of brokenness and despair, it may not be the remnants of a physical wall surrounding out home, but I  know we've taken a few hits and there are gaping holes that we have unprotected from our enemy's next attack. If we went out in the middle of the night tonight, under the light of the moon and just wandered through the streets and homes where we live, I wonder just what kind of damage we'd find.

It's tempting to want to rush forward and do something. It's tempting to want to run in with a mouth full of words, letting them spill out in hopes of lifting someone's hope. It's another to wait on God's timing, to follow His direction even when He says, for this moment, you need to be silent. You need to keep praying. You need to let Me lead. You need to trust and follow. Oh, to be a Nehemiah in a fast-paced world wanting quick fixes that momentarily numb the pain.

And when we finally get that green light, when all the excitement to see just what God can do jumps around inside us and we finally get to share, what will we do when someone says it will never work? You and your faith may have worked in the past, but this world, it doesn't want what you have. It needs real solutions, not what you're trying to share. What then? Will we still choose to take the next step, will we continue to hold tight to the fact that WE will never be the solution, but the God of heaven? Oh, He can do so much more than we could ever imagine.

May we be determined to be His servants. In this broken world, may we arise and begin to build.

Till next time! - C