Dear (The Not-So-Young Anymore) You,
Love gives —- the Creator cradling Himself in one dingy manger — so you too can always give, because His love always heals, and you can always forgive, as you’re always carried.
Yeah, who’d thought that you’d get this far?
Who’d imagine that you’d have the big X-0 candles on the cake your husband bought from the lady down your road?
…that you’d finally embrace that sweet realisation now sitting comfortably under your skin?
That it’s okay to be in the here and now, and not be all you wish you’d been?
It’s okay to have detoured and made reroute after reroute because He is always your true north in life.
It’s okay to bid friends, fathers and failures farewell because they were never meant to define you, as only Christ could direct you.
It’s okay to have been sorely disappointed, seriously discouraged, severely disillusioned, because things could never derail you when hope in Christ is what secures you.
You belong to God — you’re His, and He is the reason for your rise.
Because this is what you learn, Big Girl:
Grow with God everyday and you’ll have something to live for each new day.
Stay awake in wonder every morning and you’ll never run out of gifts when the night falls.
Because there is a way to weave losses into a blossoming new life.
I know you hadn’t always believed in it, nor desired it, but God is the author of new beginnings, and you can still burn on even after you’ve been burnt out.
Here’s the deal — do you want to live through the next phase of your life sitting sweet keeping your heart in tact, or are you game enough to just take another stretch, leap into a new realm of faith, and believe that every painful past of yours could be part of the whole of a new future?
Perhaps it isn’t so much about ageing, is it?
Perhaps it’s more about trusting again because trust is risk.
Perhaps it’s about growing into maturity, about letting go your youthful idealism, growing into the real you, owning your very life and focusing on three things that matter:
The chara grace of God, the children gifts from God, and your divine call in God — no matter your age.
Because even you’re beginning to see it:
There’s something deeply beautiful about ageing. About noticing the wrinkles forming around your eyes, about forgetting beauty as the bod clad in bikini, about growing in giving.
And this is true:
As long as you’re growing in Christ’s maturity, you’ll always grow beautiful.
As long as you allow your heart to continually heal, you’ll always made continuously whole.
The kids are fast outgrowing you —- you step aside these past few mornings to let the teenage girl fix you breakfast, serve her offering with too much carbs and loads of love and mess up your kitchen a bit, and you step aside. So she can grow.
And there’s triumph in the sweet surrender of your own way in submitting into Christ’s way. Here you gave up the seats you’ve vied for all your life, so you can finally take the seat reserved for you all your life. And it’s walking that out everyday that creates strength for the next journey of your life.
Remain excited. Think and grow alongside the kids. Awaken everyday wonder. Stave off what’s stale and stagnant so you can stay fresh, and keep flowing.
Remember Big Girl, cynicism and disappointment are sisters, hurts and rejection are twins, they desire to devour you so you must conquer them.
Choose anytime to keep a soft heart, to ward off bitterness, to keep your heart healthy, to refuse isolation, and to never stop loving people.
Love gives, and it’s love that keeps your heart engaged, your life relevant.
Resolve your past so your future won’t clog. Think about how you want your life to be defined, then live backward.
Start legacy projects. Give with your time, love with your heart, create with your self because when you peel the layers off like that you come alive time and again, no matter your age.
Keep your skills growing — there are ways to look at life that don’t allow disappointments to define you, nor cynicism to crush you. Wasn’t it Thomas Edison who experimented with some 2,000 incandescent light bulb and said “I’ve never failed once. I simply found out 2000 ways it —didn’t work?”
Yeah, it may take more than just will power to coast right out of your past ruin, to deconstruct your present so you can reconstruct your future — but in the here and now, and in every new season, God makes all things new. So come, stay close to the thrumming beat of His heart, see how He turns tombstones into testimonies.
Early every morning before the kids stir, kneel at the Word that gives life, let your eyes see before you go straight fixing another round of meals for the brood you love — because when your eyes open, the everyday becomes glorious, and you see rain, especially in hot summer days.
Start another dream factory again —- no matter how old you feel —- God isn’t confined by what confines us. We can rebound out of the enemy’s snares and everything else that gnarls at us.
Work hard at this: discover and fall in love with your own life and calling. No more yard-sticking, measuring yourself to another’s life, but only to the Word of truth.
Then go hard with your private life. Stay humble, hidden, and honed in your inner walk because this is how you become real. This is how you later share the risen hope and what you’re next called to do.