Well, any of you who know me know that birthday’s are big in my view. I think birthdays should be well celebrated and I make sure people know when my birthday is coming up so that I am guaranteed lots of greetings. As I say each year – if you don’t advertise you don’t receive! It is frivolous and fun and, yes, I admit, pretty self-centered! My birthday came and went on Monday and I was spoiled with lots of cards and emails and phone calls…and I loved it.
Now it is time for some truth-telling. This year I have noticed something different in my birthday season. Those readers who are younger will not understand what I am writing about. Those of you who are older might nod sagely or you might just say …”just wait – you are just a youngster!”. I turned 59, or as my beloved likes to put it – I have entered my 60th year. And something about life has shifted. The best way I can think to describe it is that for the first portion of life we spend it on growing up, getting educated, rebelling, carving a direction and then settling into adulthood. The next portion of my life I just kind of bopped along. I was an adult. I loved my vocation, I moved around as I felt called and I just enjoyed year after year. This year there has been an internal tilt. I have realized that a large portion of my life is now behind me. I am now, as one wise friend put it, “in Act Three”. It feels different. I am not sure that it means for any changes. Nothing about my day to day has changed. I just have a different perspective. It is not that I don’t like it, or that I necessarily do like it. It just is what it is.
This is a spiritual time and questioning for me. What is God calling me to do in this Third Act? How can I best live in this time of shift and change? On Sunday I preached on the Deuteronomy passage where Moses tells the people of Israel to “choose life”. What does it mean to “Choose Life” at this stage of my living? This is the questions I wrestle with and ponder and pray about as I move into Act 3!
