I'm All In

It’s been two days since the calendar page turned and a new digit marked the first of the pair that makes my current age.  Having a “6” there feels a little strange.  I don’t feel 60. 

I’ve taken some time over the past few days to appreciate the good life I’ve been privileged to be live, one that I am intentional about living as well as I can.  From the time I was a child, I tended to look at the beauty of life and to try to make choices that wouldn’t damage me, or those around me.  Of course I haven’t succeeded in doing that without many failures.  But I’ve tried to be intentional to do the best I could.

I have taken the time again to be thankful my good family, a husband who works hard to make the wheels of our life turn, our seven children who all tend to live passionately and aren’t afraid of the risks of life.  I have learned some powerful things from them and from the opportunities that have come from being their momma and bearing, birthing, guiding, encouraging, disciplining, and walking alongside them as best as I’ve known how. 

I’ve paused to note the amazing friends and acquaintances who have been a part of my life and for the things that I’ve learned from you, the courageous and caring things you’ve modeled, the joys and adventures we’ve shared, the heartaches we’ve carried together, the victories we’ve seen, and the things we are still persevering for.

And I’ve thought back to the many layers of my life and realized this morning that some of each of them is still with me.  I am still the careful child, watching for the subtle things before deciding what route I will go.  I am the teen who wanted to lean out and catch the best parts of life.  I am the mid-twenty momma with expanding hopes for her life and dreams for her family.  I am the thiry-ish woman who dug in deeper than before to build a faith, to make a home, to reach out for all that God had imagined for my life, and to pour His presence out to those around me regardless of the state of what we seemed to have to offer.  I am still the forties one who had a veil pulled back on a picture of His desire that both satisfied me and stirred a deep hunger for more.  I am the woman of my last decade too, where all that I had sown needed to be pulled on, where I discovered that He is with me in far deeper ways than I’d imagined, where promises He’d made were kept, where refreshment was present as was shelter in the storms.  

I am now 60.  I feel the strength of roots that have grown deep, of freedom that I’ve practiced through trusting on many days that He would be good because He said He would (even though I couldn’t see how He would possibly pull off a miracle this time.)  And by gum (I’m old enough now to have earned adding some of those kind of phrases to my vocabulary), He’s done it!  And He’s still doing it.  One of the best blessings of getting older is having the stack of volumes of evidence in my own life. 

Time is feeling a little short, though you never know…I may have several good decades still ahead of me.  But I’m not taking a chance.  Today is to be lived with as much spirit and trust as I can muster.  I want to keep on in this great adventure, watching how He continues to be who He claims, being woven with and surrounded by His care and provision, being called to what will inevitably be more uncomfortable places and finding they will be home because He is with me. 

This Jesus, …this Galilean who walked on water and stilled storms, …this Nazarene who trusted through the wilderness and midnight garden prayer and a hilltop execution clear to a resurrection morning has given me the gift of life and the opportunity to live with abandon to His call.  He is a roaring lion and a whispering lover who has a great dream of sharing life with us as He continues to rescue and heal us and a broken planet.  I am ruined.  Any other offer is a drop in the bucket compared to the ocean of life He invites me into. 

I’m all in.  Age only makes it richer.