Headed to Forty

“Oh, Lordy, Look Who’s 40!” is a stale idiom that is only funny to people who aren’t having a birthday. I have encouraged friends who were turning 40 and looked toward my own impending day and thought–“this is no big deal.” Frankly, I am grateful to have reached this age. I have seen many examples in my life of people who were not even allowed 40 years. Yet as the day keeps swiftly approaching, I feel a sense of impending doom. I always said this wouldn’t happen to me, that I would just have a big party and enjoy the day. I really do like my life, most of the time. As always there are things I would change if I could, but some things are as they are.

Why does this happen to seemingly everyone at this monumental birthday? Probably because at 40 you tend to be stuck right in the middle of your life. You feel bored, tired and ready to move on, but you know that the day after you turn 40 will be just like the day before. We tend to feel stuck in a job that is not profitable for us to leave. We may have children that we are toting around to ball games or other school activities. Maybe time alone is so infrequent that when you get it, you don’t know what to do with it. When we feel stuck, we sometimes start thinking of what we can do to move ourselves out of the rut. Sometimes people end up making stupid mistakes and ruining the life they had and end up no happier than they were before. So, as I travel down the road to 40, with my eyes wide open, I am looking to my God. He made me and He knows why I want to cry and run away and hide. He knows how many years I have left, and how they will unfold. He knows the situations that make me feel suffocated and stuck and I am waiting for Him to move me.

Some ways that I feel God moving me at the moment are to get healthy. It’s not news to me that I needed this, but I have begun to feel the urgency of it. I keep hearing of people in their 40's having strokes and heart attacks, and I’ve just realized that I am there. Another way God is moving me is to listen more to Him. I can’t know what He is wanting me to do if I don’t listen. I tend to fill up every moment with noise. It may not sound noisy, but I engage my brain constantly. I am reading or interacting on social media and sometimes the silence can be just as noisy as sound. We must pull ourselves away in order to hear God’s voice. I can’t complain that I don’t know what God wants if I didn’t wait for His answer. It’s been over an hour since I checked in on Twitter, yet the world still revolves.

Psalm 34:8 says “Oh, taste and see that the Lord is good! Blessed is the man who takes refuge in him!” I dedicated my life to God many years ago, but in the hullabaloo of my life I have taken control of parts of it again. I really like my social media–in large quantities. I sometimes feel so bored with the same old, same old that I can’t motivate myself to even do those things that are required. So as I sit in the quiet and listen to God, I also ask that He strengthen my resolve to break bad habits and do better. I pray that he will refresh my zest for the life I have and help me to give it all I have once again. I hope to spend the next 40 years seeking God and taking refuge in Him.