I turned 41 this weekend.

How did that happen?

The funny thing about that question is that the assumption you probably made when you read it is that I am in denial about my age, that, perhaps, I am going to rail against aging and bemoan the youth that is lost.. etc. etc.

I will not be so prosaic… I hope.

I love being 41.

There! I said it!

Over the past year, it is as though I have passed through a veil into security, confidence, a little more self-knowledge.  I didn’t expect to actually wake up and feel different, you know, the way you think you will on a “big” birthday like 16 , or 18 or 21.. or even 30! Yet, somehow, this weekend, it is as though I really did feel different.  I don’t believe that there is something magical about the actual day, but rather that the introspection this season has afforded me is allowing me to walk in more fullness, more courage, more passion.  I know who I am, I know who I can be and, I am confident that I am on a journey worthy of the telling.

When you are struggling through your 20s and 30s, it seems impossible to hear the gentle voices of secure identity, voices who long to share the joy of freedom with you… you who are so concerned with the way the world sees you…  you who cannot hear the Still Small Voice for the clamor of your life.

Oh, how I wish I could have heard!

How grateful I now am for those dear friends, who planted themselves, gentle and firm, within the whirlwind of my 20s and early 30s. How honored I am that men and women of God stood in the raging rapids of my arrogant proclaiming and anguished wailings and spoke, “Grace and Peace”.  How I treasure brothers and sisters who could see through the maelstrom and steady the quailing, fainting heart within and say to me, “Take Courage”.

Those seeds of Grace, Peace and Courage have slowly, subtly rooted.  They have continued to grow, stubbornly reaching up, through marriage and miscarriage, through babies and on into teenagers, through stifling restriction and joyous release.  They have grown into great trees, and, like the tree that has grown slowly from sapling to beauty in our backyard, I am a little awed by their presence, sudden-seeming in their fullness, in their insistence of their place, in their confidence.

For me, 41 is not just another year, but seems like a beginning of sorts.

Come along for the journey and let’s see where the road leads!

Grace and Peace,

Ally