50

Today is my birthday.  I turn 50 years old today.  I feel so old inside.  I have aged 10 years in the last 2.  I have done what I never thought I would survive doing yet in many ways it has set me free.  I don't feel as afraid.  For so much of my life fear has been my constant companion.  My childhood was full of losses and I learned to be hyper-vigilant.  I learned to look behind every corner so I could be ahead of the next catastrophe.  That seldom works by the way.  What I have learned in the last 2 years is that control is a misnomer.  It is not real, we are just more comfortable pretending it is real.  In the last year I have lost the one person nearest and dearest to my heart.  The one person who knew me better than anyone else in the world and loved me anyway.  And, I survived.  I didn't just survive, I am doing ok.  Don't get me wrong, I miss him like crazy.  I am mad that he left me a messy work bench that I now have to sort and clean but I miss that messy man.  Last night I woke up crying.  Don't remember the dream but I was crying.  It was a rare day for me to not hear how beautiful, smart or talented I was.  It has been so long since I heard him say those word.  But I have survived.  I am not as afraid.  I do have to remind myself that God is still in control, even in this.  That are days are numbered and God knew when Tom's last day would be and perhaps if it had not been cancer it would have been something else. That God had a plan all along and it included what to do with me after Tom was gone.  Right now I would still rather have the old.  The predictable.  The safe, (or was it safe).  Mostly that is because I can't see the new yet.  On the one occasion when we moved with kids it was very hard for the kids to be excited about moving until they saw the new house.  Until they could picture their new room.  A new back yard.  Then they were excited because they had a picture of the new and it looked good.  I am not there yet.  No real picture of tomorrow or what my life will look like 5 years down the road.  For now I live to see my babies.  They are the sunshine in my life.  And I wait expectantly.  I look to the hills.  I wonder.  How can this pain turn into something good?  What will good look like?  What will the new norm be?  I am reminded of a song we sang back at East Hill,
Something beautiful
Something Good
All my confusion, He understood
All I had to offer Him
Was brokenness and strife
But He made something beautiful
Out of my life