My man turned 43 yesterday. I’ve done the math a couple times and it’s always ending up the same. Yes. It’s 43. I actually managed to buy and wrap a present without asking him what he wanted. On time!
Do we look like it? Sometimes I feel like the last ten years of our lives are written all over our faces. It’s not a bad thing. God has been good to us. But it wasn’t all easy.
We are old enough now to have teenagers. Really good ones. This one was baptized the other Sunday. It was a lovely little ceremony with friends who stayed around to spend the afternoon and evening with us afterwards.
Shaye and Angela over on the Homemaker Chic podcast have talked a lot about the changes their families are going through right now. The new season, as it were, that you enter when the kids aren’t toddlers and they’re teenagers. They began talking about it before I was ready to admit it. They talked about focus shifting and dynamics changing. My spirit rebelled while my reality began settling in. Eventually I realized that apparently they’re more in tune with their realities than I am. It’s okay. I’m catching up.
Like, this kid is 17 today. No, yesterday. I guess it’s tomorrow now. I can’t even about that. We brought him home from Thailand 10 years ago as this cute little kid. Now he’s another man in the house. Still young enough that he wanted a salt gun for his birthday cuz that’s all he’d had a hankering for lately. We couldn’t think of anything else so got him one. There are less live flies in my kitchen but more salt in places there shouldn’t be. I’m so glad he’s still a kid in these kinds of ways.
Oh, about the seasons changing. I’m realizing that the purpose of the home is beginning to change. It is no longer going to be a place to be, so much as a place to come back to. Especially for the teenagers right now. And that change brings a shift in my priorities. Time to make the home place something that doesn’t require so much daily tending. Right now that includes selling my beloved cow, along with the rest of the farm animals so that we can travel. More on that another time.
Also, I need a break from the animals. As much as I love them, my perimenopausal situationhood finds them stressful. It’s part of why I’m tired all the time. I can turn that anxiety switch off for awhile. Loved these years, learned so much, but I’m done for awhile as are the kids. Now if only we can sell/re-home them quickly.
What I really want to do is clean my house and do laundry with more routine and intentionality. I want to drink coffee in the mornings while I read my Bible and thank God that it’s someone else milking that cow and not me. If we do keep a few chickens for the winter, I’ll go out and check on them sometime later in the day when I jolly well feel like it. And I want to make soup and bake bread on the cook stove. That’s what I want to do with my winter.
I want to be more intentional about my quiet time, serving my kids and man well, and not becoming an old, cranky, crochety, feeble woman. Like, feed my mind well and not be selfish. And friendship.
Shaye and Angela talked about friendships too lately. It must be our age. I wonder how many of us 40 year olds are coming out from under our rocks where we tended our babies and spent our time in the trenches of baby years, feeling low-key lonely but still trying to figure out what friendships look like for us practically. Or for me, life took a corner and my circle of people changed. What does making new friends look like? I’d love more nitty gritty accountability and in your face friendship. But I doubt my own ability to hold up my end of the deal. Life feels too busy for it and I am constantly tired. Something is wrong there.
Also, I’m not sleeping right now. So there’s that. It’s not always like this. But tonight it is. Tomorrow is Sunday. I’ll rest then.
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