57

Tonight, at my desk

Today I’m 57 and I will love this year.

Because my birthday comes so near the end of the year, I take stock of my life the same way all of us do at the year’s end. Because this coming year also represents the beginning of a new decade, it’s easy to reflect on the last TEN years. A lot of us are comparing pictures of ourselves—pictures taken in 2009 and others taken in 2019—and we see time is seldom kind, especially after a certain age. I admit that I love comparing pictures of me in 2009 to one of me in 2019.

Ten years ago, Mario and I were living in Johannesburg, but travelling all over the continent of Africa. Our beautiful dream of working with a network of churches spread out all over the world had come true, and we were becoming more and more familiar with existing churches all over the continent of Africa.

I found a picture today of me in 2009. I was part of a team that was visiting an orphanage in Upper Egypt. I remember that I felt fortunate to be part of the team, but it was sweltering that day, and I had just had surgery, only one day before. Here I was, fresh out of the hospital, and I was back to work because I didn’t want to miss anything.

The work we were involved in was lovely, as were the people we worked with. I often missed my family, I often felt stifled, and I desperately wanted my life to matter—and I really wanted God to be proud of me. My dissatisfaction started to show—I was thirty pounds overweight in this picture.

Looking back, I want to hug this girl. I want to tell her to take it easy and maybe reconsider her definition of living for God. The woman I am today is truer, less guarded, more surrendered and less tense.

Shortly after Mario and I returned to Sacramento, I collapsed. I slept for a year, I tell people. I re-evaluated my life and my purpose. I visited family, and I wrote like crazy. I toyed with the idea of going back to school and getting my college degree. I finally took a deep breath and started in January of 2015. In June of 2020 I am scheduled to graduate with a Masters of Fine Arts in Creative Writing. I really look forward to the completion--I've done seven years of college in five years.

Who knows? Maybe you’ll read a similar blog, written by me ten years from now, about wanting to hug the 57-year-old me and tell her everything is going to be okay.

Every year, I read the corresponding Psalm with the year I am turning. Today I am 57 years old, and Psalm 57 encourages me that God has steadfast love, and faithfulness that reaches to the clouds. With this assurance, I can rest.

And I will love this year.

~

Be merciful to me, O God, be merciful to me,

    for in you my soul takes refuge;

in the shadow of your wings I will take refuge,

    till the storms of destruction pass by.

I cry out to God Most High,

    to God who fulfills his purpose for me.

He will send from heaven and save me;

    he will put to shame him who tramples on me. Selah

God will send out his steadfast love and his faithfulness!

My soul is in the midst of lions;

    I lie down amid fiery beasts—

the children of man, whose teeth are spears and arrows,

    whose tongues are sharp swords.

Be exalted, O God, above the heavens!

    Let your glory be over all the earth!

They set a net for my steps;

    my soul was bowed down.

They dug a pit in my way,

    but they have fallen into it themselves. Selah

My heart is steadfast, O God,

    my heart is steadfast!

I will sing and make melody!

Awake, my glory!

Awake, O harp and lyre!

    I will awake the dawn!

I will give thanks to you, O Lord, among the peoples;

    I will sing praises to you among the nations.

For your steadfast love is great to the heavens,

    your faithfulness to the clouds.

Be exalted, O God, above the heavens!

    Let your glory be over all the earth!

Psalm 57 English Standard Version (ESV)

55

 55 today

I will love this year.

I still remember the day I called my father to wish him a Happy 55^th Birthday.

“Hey, Dad!” I said, “Stay alive with 55!”

“That’s about it,” he chuckled. 

It was 1989, and major networks were saturated with the Stay Alive—Drive 55!” advertising campaign.  Our nation had been experiencing rising gasoline prices, but the Department of Transportation insisted that its focus was about freeway safety, hoping to minimize high-speed accidents.  Television commercials were everywhere, interrupting our favorite shows: “Stay Alive—Drive 55!”  Since these public service announcements were everywhere, I thought I was being funny and clever by merging my father’s birthday greeting with a nation-wide slogan.  Hilarious!

Today, I am 55. (How did this happen?)

I was born on December 28, 1962—a Friday.  My mother began that particular weekend by delivering me, her second of five children.  I was one of the babies born in the space between Christmas and New Year’s—a time where most people were catching their breath from the holiday gatherings or gearing up for one.  

I grew up believing that December 28^th was an unfortunate time of year to be born, but when I eased into adulthood, it didn’t take me long to appreciate the sheer brilliance of being born on this day!  It is a relaxed time of year—and family gatherings are more frequent.

My 54^th year has been amazing on many levels—I graduated from university and won two significant awards for my writing—but it has also been very painful. Mario and I have both lost dear, close friends.  It has been (as all other years have been) bursting with joy and pain, grief and celebration—chock-filled with life.

The “Stay Alive—Drive 55” campaign was designed to encourage drivers to slow down and enjoy their journey.  The concept never really caught on for Americans; we tend to speed through our lives, rushing from one place to the other.  It is quite easy to forget that along the way there is laughter and miracles in the seemingly mundane and ordinary steps in between. 

Today—on my 55^th birthday—I will stop and reflect on the journey.  It’s actually an amazing one that I share with all of you. Today I told my daughter, Alicia, that I seriously am grateful for the life I have.  In fact, I feel undeserving of all the blessings that are in it.  I am grateful to God, my family, and friends for loving me. 

And I will love this year.

“But as for me, I trust in You.” 

Psalm 55:23

54

 

Me - at my beloved writing station - at 54

I will love this year.

Today marks my fifty-fourth year here among this beautiful human race.  I am deeply grateful and richly blessed.  My whole life has been defined by the grace of God.  I feel like His favorite daughter, one that often disappoints humans and yet delights Him.  I am tethered to Him –the source of my life and love.  For some inexplicable reason, I have received a greater measure of everything just because He loves me. 

This is truth.  This is real.  This is who I am.

The by-the-ways about me are in a constant state of flux.  By the way, I am a mother.  By the way, I am a wife.  I am a sister, a daughter, a student, a teacher, a writer, an artist, a lover and a musician.  I have learned not to define myself by the by-the-ways in my life. 

If someone would have asked who I was ten years ago, I would have answered that I was Mario’s wife and a homeschooling mother.  Five years ago, I would have answered that I was kind of an American Christian missionary living in Africa.  I am learning how to define myself without presenting the accreditations of all the temporary roles in my life. 

If you read this on the 28th of December, I will most likely be actively grieving with friends and family.  Mario and I will be at David Smith’s memorial –a celebration of a friend’s life.  Dave was here one minute and then gone the next, leaving us all looking around and asking how something like this could happen.  He was a Christian man, one of our closest confidants and advisers.

This year, more than any other, I realize that one day I will die.  I look at my own precious Mario, my beautiful rock, and know that I will grieve him one day –or he will grieve me.  When that day comes, all of my temporary roles of wife, mother, writer, artist, etc. will not matter as much as me being a daughter of God.  That is the role which is eternal, one that defines me on this earth and in the next world. 

For Dave, I am happy.  For his family, I am not.  It is hard to do without one another when there is love that has held us together.  The bonds of family and friendships are beautiful here, but I am grateful for the better bonds: the ones that bind us together with God.

Today I have wisdom in a measure – and next year I will have even more.  I treasure all of you, my friends and family who build me up and shape me into who I am.  Because of all of your human contact, I am constantly reminded of how beautiful this life actually is.

This day, I give you the first three verses of Isaiah 54.  This is a promise from Our Father to Israel.  We inherit these promises because we are grafted into the vine through the righteous branch -and I am looking forward to another triumphant year.

Blessings, today and always.

“Shout for joy, O barren one, you who have borne no child;

Break forth into joyful shouting and cry aloud, you who have not travailed;

For the sons of the desolate one will be more numerous

Than the sons of the married woman,” says the Lord.

 “Enlarge the place of your tent;

Stretch out the curtains of your dwellings, spare not;

Lengthen your cords

And strengthen your pegs.

“For you will spread abroad to the right and to the left.

And your descendants will possess nations

And will resettle the desolate cities.

53

I'm 53 today!

I will love this year.

I turn fifty-three today, an age that doesn’t mean much, other than I feel blessed to have such good health at this age.  What does appeal to me is that number – it is one that I have admired for years.  Isaiah fifty-three is one of the most significant pieces of literature in my life.    

Isaiah, an Old Testament prophet, specifically described the Messiah over 700 years before the birth of Jesus. Isaiah’s prophecy was so spot-on that it reads like an account of the sufferings of Jesus on the cross that someone wrote afterward. I remember the first time I heard it – in the living room of our Spiritual mentor’s house.  He asked me if it sounded like anyone I knew.  I went to bed that night and couldn’t get the chapter out of my mind.  How beautiful - that God would use these words to reach my heart.

I am a woman with a gazillion facets that can never be seen all at once, but God knows -and sees-every side of me.  I was a woman hell-bent on following my own version of wisdom when God penetrated my heart and injected life into me.  I was changed completely by His love and I am constantly amazed at HIS mercy.

I give this gift to you on my birthday –Isaiah 53.  Whether you are suffering or victorious, let these words wash over you.  Honestly, does this sound like anyone you know? 

Who has believed our message? And to whom has the arm of the LORD been revealed? For He grew up before Him like a tender shoot, And like a root out of parched ground; He has no stately form or majesty That we should look upon Him, Nor appearance that we should be attracted to Him. He was despised and forsaken of men, A man of sorrows and acquainted with grief; And like one from whom men hide their face He was despised, and we did not esteem Him. Surely our griefs He Himself bore, And our sorrows He carried; Yet we ourselves esteemed Him stricken, Smitten of God, and afflicted. But He was pierced through for our transgressions, He was crushed for our iniquities; The chastening for our well-being fell upon Him, And by His scourging we are healed. All of us like sheep have gone astray, Each of us has turned to his own way; But the LORD has caused the iniquity of us all To fall on Him. He was oppressed and He was afflicted, Yet He did not open His mouth; Like a lamb that is led to slaughter, And like a sheep that is silent before its shearers, So He did not open His mouth. By oppression and judgment He was taken away; And as for His generation, who considered That He was cut off out of the land of the living For the transgression of my people, to whom the stroke was due? His grave was assigned with wicked men, Yet He was with a rich man in His death, Because He had done no violence, Nor was there any deceit in His mouth. But the LORD was pleased To crush Him, putting Him to grief; If He would render Himself as a guilt offering, He will see His offspring, He will prolong His days, And the good pleasure of the LORD will prosper in His hand. As a result of the anguish of His soul, He will see it and be satisfied; By His knowledge the Righteous One, My Servant, will justify the many, As He will bear their iniquities. Therefore, I will allot Him a portion with the great, And He will divide the booty with the strong; Because He poured out Himself to death, And was numbered with the transgressors; Yet He Himself bore the sin of many, And interceded for the transgressors.