Speed walking to my car, I unconsciously ran my hand over my hair in an attempt to stuff the unruly pieces back into my thinning ponytail.“ Stop fidgeting,” the floor director would always tell me on the set of The 700 Club. I couldn’ t help it. It was something I did when I was anxious.
“ Are you excited?” I heard a voice behind me yell, clearly attempting to get my attention.
“ Your birthday! It’ s coming up in a couple of weeks, right?!” My friend was trotting in her heels to catch up with me as I was hurrying to get into my car.
“ Wanna do something to celebrate?” she asked enthusiasti- cally while trying to catch her breath.
“ No, not really,” I said, trying to mask any sign that my heart was dropping at the very mention of my upcoming birthday.“ I mean, it’ s just another day, no big deal,” I responded with a half smile.
As I turned the key to unlock my car door I stared over at my son, widening my eyes a bit so he could catch my signal— the signal that nine times out of ten he missed. So I tried the ventriloquist routine to reinforce the message by mumbling,“ Hurry up and get in the car.”
I was turning forty-four years old. Middle-aged, according to my twelveyear-old son.“ I’ m not middle-aged. I’ m still young and hot, right?” I had teased him a couple of weeks ago as he watched me place a batch of brownies into the oven.
Not amused, he’ d looked meaningfully at me as I stood in the kitchen with my oversized sweat pants and a T-shirt exhibiting a wonderful array of splatters and drips from the brownie mix I was licking off the big mixing spoon.
When was the last time I washed that shirt? I thought as I pulled out of the church parking lot.
Forty-four, I repeated in my head. This was not what the forties are supposed to look like. Your forties are when you finally get into the groove of life, when you feel more settled and more stable in all your roles. You know who you are and why you’ re here, right? But nothing could be farther from the truth, I thought, as I drove down the winding road toward my house.
Here I was, a forty-something-yearold unemployed, divorced – widowed single mom fighting the battle of the bulge and living off her son’ s college savings. I had no clue who I was anymore and was struggling to make sense of it all. In fact, any day now I was expecting someone to ring my doorbell and shout,“ Smile! You’ re on Candid Camera.”
Still, I had committed to trusting God in this process of my life; I was just trying to figure out what that really meant. My days were spent studying the Bible and crying out to God, but rather than feeling all warm and fuzzy, I was feeling like my life was in the eye of the storm.
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