Beauty on the Backroads

Stories of grace for life's unexpected turns

dreams

How I thought it would be

I had a birthday last week, my 39th. I remember when I turned 29 and then 30, I had this sort of desperate feel to my life. At 29, I was three weeks away from getting married. At 30, I had an almost-two-month-old. These were monumental, life-goal type of events, and I remember feeling like once I hit 30, that was it. Life was over. I was officially old.

Annie Spratt via Unsplash

Almost 10 years later, I laugh at my younger thoughts. At 29, I wanted to cling to my 20s, or the thought of them. They were full of fun and friends and discovery and adventure. For a few years, I would not admit to my real age. I was 29 plus one or something like that.

Now that my 30s are almost behind me, I’m mostly relieved to have survived them. Motherhood to two kids 20 months apart might have been the thing that broke me all on its own but the last decade also saw our marriage crack straight to the center and we’ve spent years repairing the rift. There was grad school (for my husband) and the letting go of what we thought our life might be. There was financial struggle and a move. And while I wouldn’t call our life stable yet (will it ever be?) I don’t feel the same kind of desperation I did back then.

Bear in mind, my life is not really what I thought it would be at 39. I thought we would have our own house by now. I thought I would be some kind of “success” or that as a couple at least one of us would be working in a profession for which we earned degrees. I thought I would feel more like I had it all together. I thought the feeling of desperation, of clinging to the past, to the life I once had, would overwhelm me. I thought maybe I’d have some kind of mid-life crisis. I thought life would be more like the middle-class American dream.

And it’s not that my life doesn’t bear some resemblance to some of those things, but if I told my 29-year-old self what the 39-year-old version of herself would be, she have laughed and dismissed me as a lunatic.

At 39, I know better who I am and what I want, even if it doesn’t make a lot of sense. I’m not longing for the good old days of my 30s because they weren’t all that good. I know I’ll have challenges in the next 10 years (by the time I’m 49, my oldest could be in college–what?!) but all I feel is free and sure and accepting. Yes, there are times I still wish we had a house of our own, that we could measure our success by our professional lives, that our life didn’t sometimes look like failure when compared to others our age.

But I’m not sorry for who I am now, even if I do feel a bit like a late bloomer. At 39, I feel rich in the things that matter most: friends and family, purpose and passion. I ran 1.8 miles on my 39th birthday and I’m prepping for a 5K with my daughter. It is one evidence of health. If you could see inside my mind, there would be a change there, too.

I no longer fear 40. I don’t want to put too much pressure on myself, but I want to make a sort of wish list for my next decade: the things I’d like to do, see, experience, become. Not a bucket list, necessarily, but something that gives some intentionality to my 40s. I feel like my 30s happened to me and I spent a lot of time reacting and playing catchup. I want to set the tone for my 40s. I know I can’t control everything that will happen to me in the next decade and that’s not exactly what I mean. It’s just that I feel more capable of saying ahead of time: This is how I’m going to be, this is the direction I’m going to keep moving, no matter what happens.

Sebastian Molineras via Unsplash

My 30s felt like clawing my way up a hill I desperately wanted to climb only to find myself back at the bottom. The last 10 years drained me mentally, emotionally, physically and at times, I didn’t want to attempt the climb again.

Not so now. In my 40s, I don’t want to see falling as failure, setbacks as stop signs. I want to dig deep and find the grit I know I’ve got inside of me. To give myself grace when things don’t work out like I planned. To look around at the beauty of the moment, even if I’m stuck on a proverbial hillside and the top seems so far away.

Life doesn’t feel as much like a race anymore. It’s more like a stroll. I want to fill my days with beauty and meaning, even if I’m doing things I don’t like. (I’m looking at you housework.)

In my 30s, I thought I had to accomplish a lot of stuff to matter in the world.

Now, I see that my very existence matters in the world, and I want my life to reflect that. I don’t have to get somewhere in life to make a difference. I can make a difference right here, right now. (And making a difference might not look like much. Maybe no one will even notice.)

And I could be wrong about all of it. Maybe my 40s won’t be what I thought. Still, I feel more prepared than ever to face the uncertainties and maybe even welcome the surprises.

When dreams turn to dust

I’ve been putting off writing this blog post for weeks, though it’s been living in my head for that long or longer. I don’t want to write it because what I feel is mostly sad, and I’m tired of feeling sad and defeated. I desperately want to hope but hope feels like something just out of reach. Maybe I should wait for a sunnier day to write this, but maybe if I get the words out, the fog in my head will lift.

Let me begin with this, though: What you are about to read is just one part of a whole big life. It’s the saddest part right now, which means it is sometimes the most dominant part, but the other parts are not so sad. But this is what I need to write about right now.

Dreams.

If you read this blog regularly, you might know that this year has been a roller coaster already.

I wish I had good news. But in the last month, not one but two dreams we were holding on to turned to dust in my hands. They were the kind of dreams I could almost picture as reality but just before they became touchable, poof! Gone. Like a bubble you try to hold but end up popping instead.

Austin Ban via Unsplash

One was a writing dream. It was close to the end of it. A few clicks from being something I could literally hold in my hands. And then, seemingly out of nowhere, it was gone. A project I had given significant time and effort to was pulled from my grasp. Maybe I had been holding it too tightly in the first place, but I am still grieving its loss, even if I know I am freer now to pursue my own work.

It is just a memory now, a lesson learned.

And maybe I wouldn’t be so sad if another dream hadn’t also turned to dust in that time.

Last month I wrote about the possibility that our dream of buying a house in the city could die. We had not great news from the bank but we still had a little bit of hope. Another call about financing, to no avail. A foreclosure house in great condition that actually fit with the budget the bank could offer. A short timeline to make a decision. Homebuyer classes for first-timers that left me feeling overwhelmed and discouraged. The eventual decision to not pursue home buying at this time.

We had hoped that maybe this summer would be the year we could make the move into the city, to continue following a passion we can’t exactly explain. We want to be where the people, especially refugees, are, but it’s not a mission to save, only to live in community with and love imperfectly.

Can we still do this without buying a house in the city? Yes. And we are.

Still, the dream. We have been renters for 10 years in places too small for our growing family. We are looking for a place to call home and while I’m aware that home ownership can turn into a nightmare (related: The Money Pit is on Netflix), there is still this desire.

But it, too, is dust for the moment. We need to pay down debt. We need more income to do it. I’m frustrated with trying to get paying work as a writer and editor. It’s a cycle. And we’re stuck in some ways. And I feel like throwing the ashes of my dreams on my body and walking around in constant lament.

And yet.

Even ashes don’t mean death.

I don’t understand it, but this beautiful piece of art that hangs on our wall speaks truth.

God can do amazing things with ashes. In the creation story, he creates man from dust. At Christian funerals, we hear ashes to ashes, dust to dust. Even in death we believe that dust is not the end, not really. In another story, God makes a pile of dry bones live.

It is the Easter season now, the time when we celebrate that death is not the end because resurrection has the last word. The God who can resurrect even the dead in body can surely resurrect the dreams that have turned to dust.

Even now, I believe.

And not just because the Bible tells me so. But because when I am not even looking for it, I am seeing resurrection. While watching a silly animated movie with my kids, the dreams of a bunch of performers crumble but they persist and perform anyway. And the dream is resurrected.

While watching another movie, a story I’ve experienced numerous times in a variety of ways, what looks like the end, an enchantment settling in forever, is not the end. There is resurrection.

And when I’m speaking this story to a friend, expressing my frustration with my life and writing, her 10-year-old daughter chimes in: “If you have a lot of stories in your imagination, you should just write them down.”

I don’t know your dreams or the state of them, but I know that when my dreams seem only like dust, cold and lifeless, God is still speaking resurrection to them. He is fanning them with the fires of His Spirit, and even if I can’t see one single ember, I have hope that the dust is not the end.

End note: If you’re enjoying what you’re reading, you can add your e-mail address to my list (at the top of the righthand sidebar) and you’ll get a snippet of my new posts the same day I publish. In exchange, I’ve got a free short story for you. You can also sign up using this link. I promise not to share your e-mail address or send you junky spam.