My Birthday List: 10 Things I Learned this Year

I turned 41 this past weekend, and it was timely in that I’ve been reflecting a lot lately on everything that has transpired since I turned 40 and what I’ve learned from it all. The main thing, of course, is that I had another baby, so I’ve been living in that parent-with-two-children discovery zone wherein you keep marveling at all the ways a second child can be different from the first because you’ve heard everyone say it but now you’re actually experiencing it.

Anyway, to celebrate the fact that I’ve survived the first year of my 40s and have finally reentered the Land of People Who Sleep Through the Night (which I think I had begun to think of as mythical, since L didn’t sleep through the night until literally two weeks before H was born, and then we started all over with the sleep deprivation), I thought I would lay out what those aforementioned lessons have been.

Here goes.

1. It’s possible to become a morning person. Prior to this year, I would have characterized myself as a night owl. But having two littles leaves me just wanting to go to bed myself once they’re tucked in at night. I’m able to expend my best energies when I’m rested, and once the girls started sleeping through the night, I began getting up at 4:45 in order to be in my reading and journaling spot, coffee in hand, by 5. Now, I live for these hours of quiet. They restore me. And I love watching the sky lighten as the sun comes up. Early morning birdsong has become one of my favorite sounds.

2. Iced coffee is my jam. Before we moved to Memphis, I never really considered iced coffee. Part of coffee’s charm, in my mind, is the heat curling up from the cup, warming your hands–unless you’re in the Mid-South on a 115-degree July day. A really good iced coffee–preferably cold-brewed and left to rest for a day or two–is pure deliciousness mixed with whole milk and a little liquid Stevia. The bottled Starbucks iced coffee you can buy in the grocery store is tops, and you don’t need to go to a coffee shop to get it. Afternoon slump, begone.

3. Making friends at 40 may be tough, but it’s worth the effort. I learned this one the hard way–by not making friends. When we moved here, knowing absolutely no one, and then had difficulty settling on a church (a problem caused, in part, by us), I sort of gave up for a while. I basically made one real friend in a year and a half, and she has (understandably) her own life and kids and a job, so she simply can’t be my everything, nor should she be. But adding additional friends felt hard. When you are the new person in town, you inevitably find that you’re likely to be the only one looking for new friends–everyone else who has been living in your new town already has a social circle, and sadly, people are busy, which means the burden really lies with you. I got tired of inviting new people out for coffee and my invitations not being reciprocated, so I stopped. For a while, it was a relief just to stop investing in people who obviously didn’t want to–or were too busy to–return the investment. Then, several weeks ago, we found out E is going to be away for his job for a while. Like, a long while. At that point, I realized I had allowed myself to live in a community vacuum, and that no matter how hard it was, I was going to have to try again. At the same time, a group of women at a local church opened up their arms and basically said to me, “Hey! Come be part of our family!” I know it will take time and effort to build relationships that have depth and authenticity, but I also know I’m going to need those relationships when E is far away–and in fact, I needed them all along. We all need friends, no matter how old we get.

4. I’m more of a homebody than I thought. I love being home with my people. Love an evening spent curled up with a book. Love my furniture, my mantel, the pictures on my walls. I love afternoon tea at my own table and staying in for breakfast on Saturday morning. I get a little bit of cabin fever about once a week, but that’s generally solved with an hour or two at the bookstore. I like adventure, too, but in small doses and with my people beside me. I used to think I wanted a career that involved travel and lots of go-go-go, but I’ve changed my mind about that. I’d much rather spend my days in my home office with its antique turquoise table, piles of books, and westward facing window, making words sing on the page. I’d rather cook dinner in my own kitchen most nights than be out at a new restaurant.

5. I love journaling. I’ve always wanted to be one of those people who keeps a regular journal, and from the time I was very young, I’d try every so often, but I always felt like I was writing under a microscope (even if it was only me looking through that microscope), and eventually I’d give up and toss the notebook. This year I decided to try again, thanks to Julia Cameron’s The Artist’s Way, and I think I’ve finally learned to just let go while I’m journaling, to let whatever wants to come out, come out. I don’t always do it the way Julia Cameron suggests, but it’s definitely become a consistent thing in my life. It relieves stress, helps get my creative juices flowing, and helps me process things. And I love writing longhand.

6. Reading aloud to my kids is even better than I thought it would be. This year I started reading chapter books to L. We began with the first few Betsy-Tacy books by Maud Hart Lovelace, went on to Little House in the Big Woods and The Boxcar Children, and last week we finished The Lion, the Witch and the Wardrobe (by her request, mind you–she loves the movie and wanted to read the book). The crazy thing is, even though L is only four and the reading level of these books is clearly way beyond her vocabulary, she listens rapt-eyed as I read. In fact, out of all the books we’ve read, she’s been most captivated by The Lion, the Witch and the Wardrobe, which has to be the toughest. This has taught me not to be skeptical of her ability to take in a story regardless of the language level. No doubt we will have to re-read all of these again later, but I’m cool with that.

7. How I feel about my body is more about how it feels than how it looks. Maybe it’s something to do with aging and self-acceptance, but I care less about my pants size these days than how I feel. I enjoy exercise that makes me feel good–walking, biking, yoga. If my clothes feel good, I feel happy. I want to be healthy, but I also want to enjoy my life, which means continually working on a balance of incorporating movement I actually enjoy, cooking healthy meals that are a pleasure to eat, and valuing my body for what it is capable of rather than how it looks.

8. Doing what I love matters–a lot. I’ve always believed this, but the older I get, the more deeply I believe it. Sometime during my thirties, time began to go by at a noticeably faster pace, and I’m so glad I spend most of my time doing something I love. I can’t imagine doing work that doesn’t fill me up. I look back at the risky career switch I made eight years ago, and I breathe a sigh of relief that I actually did it. It was the right move. If you find something you truly love, you shouldn’t waste all your  precious time doing something you don’t. I realize, of course, that this isn’t always practical or logistically possible, in which case I say you should at least carve out chunks of time for what you love, even if you earn your paycheck doing something you don’t.

9. Motherhood really is the best–and the hardest–thing ever. I always heard other women say this, but of course it’s one of those things you don’t know for yourself until you’re in it.

10. Small is better. Over the past few years, the number of spiritual growth and self-help books hitting the market on how to live more slowly, how to survive in our Internet-driven culture, how to get back to basics, how to be free of the pressure to compare yourself to Pinterest perfection and Facebook fluff has grown exponentially. The cry is clear. And if there’s one thing God has been showing me this past year, it’s that I’m more peaceful, more content, when I bring my focus inward, placing it on my home and my family, than when I widen it and try to be tuned in all the time to the world, to social media, to the thousands of voices I never hear in my personal life. I’ve been calling this the “call to small,” and embracing it has meant better days. In Simply Tuesday, Emily P. Freeman writes, “When I celebrate my smallness and receive the gift of obscurity, I am free. I have hope. I can give generously. I can be who I am rather than who you think I am or who I want you to think I am.” Small is a happy place.

What have you learned this year? Comment below and share something–I’d love to hear what God has been doing in your life.