Feeling Older - Something New For Me.

I wrote this the day I turned 49, almost a year ago.... last week. I have waited so long to post it. I am not sure why I needed the time ... between the words spilling out and feeling comfortable publishing the post.

But since I have just read over the words and like I am reading someone else's memory... I guess it is safely time to post.

And last week I turned 50, just another happy day.

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I received a birthday present today. I am forty-nine.

While I don't feel old in my soul or spirt - not even my mind (except for the fact that I have read so much, I have to be old), I can now see OLD when I look in the mirror.

 I wonder if this happens to every person that lives a long time.

For such so many years, I had a permanent internal picture of what I looked like. I didn't age a day past 20. When I looked into the mirror, I looked like me - the young me I had always known.

It must be telling that I had the ability to perceive beyond the present, or more accurately to see the past instead of the present each time I thought I was viewing a mirror image.

I recall the surprise, even shock, when I started to see my actual reflection in the mirror. My chin and neck seemed to join as one. It was no longer slender. My arms and back had extra bubble padding, and my waist looked like a circular floaty was concealed beneath my shirt.

When did that happen? Who is that women in the mirror? (Have you been there long?)

My age has never been a problem for me. We all grow older everyday, that is, until we die. I guess that is a positive contemplation: if I am aging, I am living.

So I had to look, and stare and examine.
But finally I had to accept, embrace and practice loving myself as I am.

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My husband took me out for an early birthday lunch with our teenage daughter. At the restaurant, she paused at the table before she sat down. I noticed her sleek shape draped with her lovely long black hair. In self-acceptance, she smiled knowingly, from the inside out. She was genuinely happy, and it showed. We talked and laughed, and so enjoyed sharing. Being together was what I relished most.

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And now, I pause, taking time to I reflect upon the day: 

Don't we always want to look our best? But since we must age, we hope it can be gracefully.

Yet, what I find more enduring is not how I look in the mirror, but the fact of life that appearance is not what is lasting.

So this day -I think- I recognized more deeply, that as my self-concept of my outward image changes, that it is not as important as I thought it might be.

I am -beyond a doubt -blessed in an ever beautiful way: to know others intimately, lovingly.

In my nearly fifty years, I am beginning to experience seasons of happy memories, a result of wholeness, that becomes more frequent after great healing.

I choose to ponder these pictures of life in my heart, because moments of thought, like these, can't be captured in a still-life photo. They can only be cherished spontaneously, enjoying times together.

May I always notice precious people in my life.

A New Low - No WORDS

Life has been very hard recently... many incredibly painful life situations:

• a suicide of a very young man - planning to be married to a dear friends' daughter
• releasing go of my son and learning how to be a military mom
• my young daughter has been sick with heart issues for 3 months and continuing
• rejection that regularly comes with living boldly
• the death of my husband's dad - the agony of seeing him shriveled up 
• a criminal who robbed my husband's family home and took everything and
• family members who lashed out at my husband regarding funeral matters.

My heart is heavy... I cry inside without a sound. 

Why do I feel so deeply?

I can't go backwards... I can't stuff or put my emotions on a shelf to deal with later... I can't compartmentalize like so many can.

I simply feel deeply. What I see, people's words, actions and even non-actions... they scream loud and clear to my soul. 

Overloaded. Saturated. 

I was at a loss of words... I had nothing to say. And I wanted to pick up nothing to read.

Writing has been what I could do when the bottom fell out of my world, when I was spinning out of control or longing to be gone, forever gone.

Writing kept me in a state of being connected and alive. I wrote to stay alive. I wrote to remain human, to have something to communicate even if no one listened, read or heard. 

But now I have experienced a new depth of agony, the day I felt the words stop. The end of a road - I had nothing to say. 

And even as I write today- at this very moment - I don't much feel connected to the words being pressed out of my mind and onto the page by the tapping of the plastic keys. They come but not with passion, need - a sense of MUST... I MUST speak, I MUST write, I MUST be heard.

I have experienced the day in life that the music stopped, the continual rhythmical beat of life became still and the need to be faded into the grey shades of indifference, doubt and even despair.

Nothingness. 

No need. 

No want. 

No message. 

No thought.

Writing and Reading is a form of relationship, people intertwined through words over miles and ages that otherwise they would have never met. One day the song may return ... and the words might need to flow, but for now I will be content to breathe.