"Age has given me what I was looking for my entire life-it has given me me. It has provided time and experience and failures and triumphs and time-tested friends who have helped me step into the shape that was waiting for me. I fit into me now. I have an organic life, finally, not necessarily the one people imagined for me, or tried to get me to have. I have the life I longed for. I have become the woman I hardly dared imagine I would be."
So...I am turning 45 in a week. Part of me is freaked out. Forty five just sounds so OLD. And yet, given the choice, I would not go back to any other decade of my life. I love my forties and like the quote above puts it so well, I have become the woman I hardly dared imagined I would be. I am still a work in progress, evolving and growing, but I finally feel like I am comfortable in my own skin and living the life I was meant to live.
I know that I am lucky and I am grateful every day that I get to love where I am and what I am doing. I have written about my love for teaching before, so I won't get into it here, but I know how blessed I am to be doing something that I feel like I am good at and meant to be doing.
I have three great kids and a supportive, loving husband. I have great friends, a church that I love, a caring family, two parents who are still married and in fairly good health. I am grateful for all of them, but I am also thankful that they are all supporting me in becoming more me. This sometimes comes at a price in that they challenge me, disagree with me or downright annoy me. Herein lies the dichotomy because although I want to be fully "me", comfortable in my own skin, I also want to grow and change and be challenged. So I have carefully surrounded myself with a tribe who does just that. And that makes me happy. I am finding joy in my journey; I'm happy where I am, but also happy with where I am going.
