Feeling Old

I’m feeling old lately. And it’s not just because my thirtieth birthday has been gradually marching toward me, one day at a time, with only two short weeks left until a dizzying day of collision. That is a big enough reality check of its own. A new decade. Goodbye to my 20’s.

For much of this year, the thought has left me with a pinch in my stomach, an air void in my lungs. Am I really old enough to be thirty? Is this what life feels like after three decades of completion? Shouldn’t I be more wise, more successful, more knowledgeable, more in shape, more financially secure, more [insert adjective here]? Shouldn’t I be more than I am?

It doesn’t help that I am constantly surrounded by a bunch of blonde, vivacious, leggy things, just barely adjusting to the reality of post-college life. These young creatures are my main pool of friends here in our tiny Honduran town, ranging from 19 to 23 years of age. This has been in stark contrast to my New York friends, of whom I always seemed to be the youngest. But this new crew has been a daily reminder of how much energy and idealism and spontaneity I have forfeited over the last ten years. For example, these days I like, even prefer, to stay home and read or watch a movie. I don’t enjoy drinking for the sake of drinking. I don’t notice cute guys around every corner (unless it’s my Lenster, or George Clooney, and I have yet to see George walk through the streets of La Unión. On another note, these girls barely even know who George is!). I am no longer covered by my parents’ health insurance (or any health insurance for that matter). I don’t own a single neon belly shirt or any brightly patterned stretchy jeans. I guess I have grown up.

There have been many days this year when I struggled with wanting to be youthful and cool, so as to be more relevant to my friends here and also to my students. Frankly, it was exhausting. And it wasn’t a true reflection of me, the person I am today, as opposed to the person I was in, say, 2005. I have slowly come to the realization that I actually like being my age. Twenty-nine going on thirty comes with its share of advantages. My last decade of life has been filled with adventures and mistakes and learning and unlearning, and I gratefully get the sense that I might just be a better person now than I was straight out of college.  Still a broken person, but more aware of my brokenness, and – on good days – better able to learn from it and live in spite of it, breathing in Grace.

When I think through the span of a life filled with eighty or ninety years, it almost blows me away. All the memories, all the maturity, all the living. In comparison, thirty years seems trivial. I still have a long way to go in understanding myself, in loving people well, in fully recognizing my brokenness and then fully resting in Grace.

And so, with a strange sense of peace, I am looking forward to giving Thirty a big ol’ hug.

I will leave you with this, from the writer of Ecclesiastes: “You who are young, be happy while you are young, and let your hearts give you joy in the days of your youth. Follow the ways of your heart and whatever your eyes see, but know that for all these things God will bring you into judgment. So then, banish anxiety from your heart and cast off the troubles of your body, for youth and vigor are meaningless.” 

Here’s to replacing the anxiety in our hearts with joy. Here’s to another year of living and learning. Happy birthday, Me. And a happy birthday to you, too.