I feel sad this morning, but peaceful. It's not an "unpretty" feeling at all. I alternate between a cat licking her fur, and a dog licking it's wounds. On one hand I feel good about myself. On the other I am sitting quietly recognizing that wounds have occurred and that they will heal. Sorrow is much prettier than anger. I'm accepting that I have become a person that I have wanted to be, against all odds. The glory in that goes directly to God.
If I were to die today there would be some who would say, "She died young." There would be other's who would say, "She lived a full life." At fifty-nine, I realize that I may have many years ahead of me, but I also realize that there are a lot more years behind me, than what may lie ahead. As I see it, all of my days are extra now. I've married, been widowed, raised children and nursed my parents unto death. Home and family has always meant more to me than anything else. I've had my heart full in that area, and I've had my heart broken. Both things taught me a lot about love.
Fifty-nine is an odd age. It's not quite old, but certainly not young. "Old enough!" is the way I think about it. The world has changed a lot since I was a girl, so I'm not having the experiences I would have liked to have had at this age, but there are just enough people who cherish and respect, for me to be glad to be alive.
I am a homemaker without a home, a wife without a husband, a mother without children and a daughter without parents...yet here I am, still Beth. I have no particular plan for my life, for plans, obviously, haven't proven to work well for me, but I do have a loving sense of direction.
There are grown men and women now who call me "Mom" and from the way they respond to me, they truly mean it. They cherish. They respect. I fill with awe when I think of them, just as I used to do the same when I looked upon those I gave birth to. The feelings are identical.
Throughout my life I have been severely criticized for being true to myself. There were those who criticized me for marrying young, but when my husband died when he was only twenty-seven, they stopped. There were those who criticized me for striving to remain home when I was raising my children, and those who criticized me for keeping my parents out of a nursing home, and not worrying about what would happen when they passed. My father died in 1992. My mother died in 1999. I'm still alive. I've found it odd that I have been more strongly criticized for the things I have done right in life, than for anything I did wrong. There were always plenty of people willing to encourage me to do something wrong, and a lot fewer to encourage me to do as I felt needed to be done. I think the only reason I have found that odd is that I really have been true to myself. I wouldn't have wanted to face myself in the mirror if I hadn't done what was on my heart to do.
Life hasn't been the way I would like it to be, but I've become the woman I want to be. There are many contrasts in life. Things that I don't like seem to make things that I do like stick out more. There was a time, years ago, when I didn't want to live and was too much of a coward to die. Today, not only do I enjoy my experience of life, I like myself, even when others don't.
Amazing grace. An Awesome God. I continue to write about Him, and about what He does with me, which makes me Oneamazingwriter.
