ON TURNING 50

Hello again! Here I am after another too-long hiatus. It seems that the demands of work and married life make frequent blogging a bit more difficult that it was when I was a bored and single gent. Indeed, I have just gotten back to work from the three day Columbus Day weekend; one would think that I should have had lots of time to catch up on this blog. But love prevailed; my wife was feeling sick from a reaction to her new insulin, so I sat up with her for long hours on Saturday night (we had been to a college reunion that whole day, so that's where that went). Not much got done, but a lot of loving kindness was expended, and, to me, that trumps the to-do list every time. Never ever do I look at time with my wife holding her and comforting her as a waste; indeed, doing otherwise when she needed me would be the real waste.

Well, on to my main topic; back on September 14 I had my momentous 50th birthday celebration. My wife threw an awesome party in which several of the same people that came to our wedding also came to the birthday bash. Seeing old friends at a big party is always an occasion for a certain amount of healthy and unhealthy nostalgia. Therefore you might be expecting me to launch into some long-winded speech about my life up until this time; all the worldly and spiritual wisdom I've accumulated all these years, and all the trials and tribulations I've come through. Well, I have experienced all of that, for sure. But it would seem to me to be an enormous exercise in narcissism to simply concentrate on my life and my wisdom and my trials, ad nauseum. True, this blog is about me, so one can't expect me to NOT write about me, but I just have an aversion to excessive navel-gazing when it comes to occasions like my 50th birthday.

Many people look upon this part of their lives with dread. To some it simply means one more year where youth becomes more and more distant, and death becomes just one year closer. The aches, pains, declining mental sharpness and receding/graying hair simply reminds many at my age of that fact that, in some ways, it's all downhill from here. This is the time when, for many, the legendary Mid Life Crisis hits. Floods of regrets surge forward, and frantic efforts to make up for lost time commence. I must admit that some regrets do surface once in a while; I haven't done as much with my life as a lot of people my age, it's true. But perhaps, if I think that way, I'm missing something really big. Perhaps, when I say I haven't done anything with my life, I am using SOMEONE ELSE'S standards to measure that supposed achievement figure. Worse, I may be comparing and contrasting my life to someone else's and finding myself wanting. Wanting for financial security, for friends and family, for a love life, for creature comforts, for a fulfilling job, etc., etc. This is the slippery slope downward to both self hate and envy, both poisonous to one's well being and both definitely NOT Christian virtues. Add in all that crap with the physical signs of aging, and you can add Fear to that unsavory stew. Words like CANCER and ALZHEIMER'S can strike paralyzing fear into the heart of the middle aged man or woman who has not come to terms positively with one's age and its effects, or come to terms with God about what He is doing in the midst of it all.

So how does one combat this assault of fears and regrets that come with the mid-year birthdays? By doing what one does to combat all things fearful, hateful and harmful that come from Hell; GIVE THEM TO THE LORD. OK, that sounds nice and trite, doesn't it? It certainly does if you do not know your Lord and have the kind of relationship with Him that allows you to be real with Him and love and trust Him with all your heart, soul, mind and spirit. As I have come to know Him slowly but surely, in my own stumbling way, as that kind of Lord, who listens to my every praise and complaint, my every laugh and cry, my edifying words and my less-than-edifying words, then I have come to this point of mid life curiously lacking in crisis, but thankful for ALL that He has given me in this time of life. I have a wonderful wife who has brought me more joy that I have had for most of my life, and I still have a good job despite the economic horrors going on for most Americans. It's true; God can take those things from me at any time; He has the right to do that. But why, oh why, would I want to focus on that possibility?
Would my time not be better spent simply enjoying to the absolute fullest what I DO have, NOW? Yes, it is very wise to plan for the future; but if one spends so much time on the future and concentrates so hard on delayed gratification that that one neglects the present to the point of spiritual and emotional starvation, then one is not living but dying. That person is fast becoming an Ebenezer Scrooge, constantly putting away and putting away, never enjoying the present!

One of the really nice things that has been happening as I have neared this mark in my life is that I have spent less time fighting inevitable realities such as work, relationships, finances, and my own personal shortcomings, and settled into becoming more accepting of the things I can't change, as that old saw by St. Francis goes. It certainly does not mean I don't continue trying to improve and better myself in ways that I can or that the Lord has given me grace for; but I don't do quite as much beating of my head against the wall as I used to. Like Paul, I've began accepting some of the thorns I've been dealt and adapting to them to the best of my ability. I believe that this is part of the process of gaining wisdom; simply living life and living it for a considerable span of time. I don't think there really is any other road to wisdom, really. It is always unfortunate that dementia often masks the accumulated wisdom of the elderly among us, and, even more so that, when the elderly do display that wisdom unhindered by brain disease, that the youth of our culture so easily dismisses it as irrelevant and hopelessly out of date. But there is not so much that is terribly different between our world today and, say, the world of the Depression era, in terms of human virtues and vices. There might be a vast gulf in the available technology and applied knowledge between those eras, but people as people weren't terribly different. You could certainly pit the folksy musical talents of Woody Guthrie against those of Bob Dylan or Bruce Springsteen, or the cinematic shenanigans of the Marx Brothers against that of directors the Zucker brothers (the Airplane movies), and many other such comparison. Of course I won't go into all the differences in moral standards or available recreational substances that make those two eras very different; that's a whole novel in itself. But the main point is; the wisdom of someone who lived through that time can have a heck of a lot of relevance to our time if we can all just get beyond the trivialities of musical taste, fashion sense, and technology savvy and LISTEN to them.

Okay, I don't pretend to have accumulated all the wisdom of, say, a 90 year old. But I can certainly offer more of it than I was able to when I was 30. And, I must tell you, it is a joy just to be able to tells someone in your life that is hurting, "I've been there", and MEAN it. It certainly wasn't a joy to have been through that hurt, but, on the other end of it, so much healing can come forth from my heart to another's by my having experienced the trial they are now going through. I don't have to cure their pain or make it disappear; just my understanding and listening ear can provide great comfort. Paul speaks of being able to comfort others with the comfort we've been given; well, how could we do that if we hadn't been through a painful episode ourselves? And so our suffering in this life gains great meaning after the fact; it helps us to get someone else through, and it helps us to get beyond ourselves and see the benefit of our lives to others in an increased capacity, as Jesus' example shows in the Gospels so many times.

One of the most important lessons one learns when one has live awhile is the lesson Paul spoke of in his letter to the Philippians; forgetting what lies behind and pressing on to the High Calling of one's life in God. I won't go into this too exhaustively except to say that I certainly have a LOT of past to forget about. That's the downside of living longer; the longer you live, the more past you have that you need to put behind you. Yet it does not give me a lot of anxiety these days; that increased sense of acceptance I spoke of previously has helped me not to fret so much about my past deeds and misdeeds (not that I dismiss them; I just don't fret about them). And it gives you an advantage in God's economy of things; the more past you need to put behind you, the more of His grace to do so you experience, and the more you experience that knowing of Him that is the real center of your life in Him. The verse about being forgiven much and loving much becomes a living reality. And, even better, as you learn to forget and forgive your own past, you gain the grace to do the same with all the significant others in your life.

And so I hope I have given a mercifully short viewpoint of the many aspects of reaching the age of 50, without too much pontificating. In my early blog entries you can read more about the particulars of some of my more recent life experiences; to learn about the ones farther back; well, I guess you would just have to get to know me, or I would have to write an autobiography. But for now, I am content with simply living my life that remains ahead, forgetting the past while learning from it, and forging ahead in the Lord. May we all stop dreading our birthdays and see them as milestones in our journey Home.
Peace,
Tom Sebring