a kingdom built of seeds

For perhaps the first time in my life I’m starting to feel my age, reaching the limits of my body. Stray gray hairs appear in my beard, like dying trees in a forest. Wrinkles under the eyes. I’m not young anymore. Nor am I old. Entering that middle stretch of life (God-willing). 

I realize how close I am to being 40, that landmark age. What a strange thought, approaching mid-life. In a few years I can do something crazy and chalk it up to a midlife crisis. I used to say, “Maybe by the time I’m 30”; then, “Maybe the time I’m 35”; and now, “Maybe by the time I’m 40”. Whatever it is, whatever that means.

I’m getting older. I’m not young anymore. I’ll never be young anymore. It almost grieves me.

In so many ways my life is just beginning—or did in my thirties. My twenties was the time I could never stay put for long. There was nothing to keep me at home. Come thirties I’m more content than ever to stay put, having a home I need not escape. There is a settledness that comes with age, a desire for roots and a place to belong. Yes, part of me wants to return to the drifting of my twenties. But that excitement quickly wears thin. Mostly, I want a home. And, for now, I have one.

—

At times I’m alone in a way I never have been, bordering on loneliness. I could be approaching or at the midway of my years (who can know?). Yet, more than ever, I’m content to live a quiet, solitary life. I give myself permission. There has often been an undercurrent of expectation and pressure to be and do more (mostly internal, but also from without). It’s taken years to shed it, and I’m still in process. More than ever I don’t know exactly what I “believe,” and more than ever I accept it. For whom do I perform? What is there to prove? When you quit the act you suddenly (or slowly) see what’s behind the curtain. Or, on the flip side, when you stop pretending you don’t know who you are anymore. “Who am I when I leave?” “Is to be different to be wrong?” How many times I’ve returned to these questions.

Here’s what I do know.

When you step away from the center, God moves with you. (Or he’s already there, where you will be—isn’t that comforting?)

I need not assume a certain identity to experience God and discover truth.

There’s so much more room than I ever imagined.

Time doesn’t pick favorites and it’s running out for me the same as anyone else.

No one can do for you what you can only do for yourself—not even God. (I feel the weight of this existential responsibility.)

Everything matters. Everything I do or don’t do matters.

—

I consider my life. I don’t know what I see. I’m uncertain where it’s going. When I tire of myself I consider the birds and trees. (Ah, much better.) The unselfconscious birds thriving in spring after the long winter or a long migration. The conifers pushing out light green growth on thin branches as they drink the sun of lengthier, milder days following the long darkness. Content to be what they are. This is what I envy. Contentedness comes hard. I always think of what more I should do, what more I should be. I am too self-conscious. I want to be more like the birds and trees—in myself as I am.

Spring means change. I don’t know how to change. I never knew how set in your ways you can become.

It can’t be called living to take the path of least resistance (though I am a master). If only I knew courage. I do not feel brave. But there I go again. It is not what you feel; it is what you do.

It is being who I am—being in myself as I am.

I want to be like the birds and trees.