Numbering The Hodgepodge

Welcome to the Wednesday Hodgepodge! How is everyone? Out and about or napping on the couch more often than you should? I'm asking for a friend. 

If you've answered this week's questions add your link to the end of my post, then go say howdy to your neighbor. Everybody's got time, right? Here we go-

1. In a single sentence tell us something about your 40's. If you haven't reached that milestone yet tell us something (in a single sentence) about whatever decade you're in now.

If you read my blog you know I wrote an entire post on this topic yesterday. You can read it here. A single sentence is tough because that's ten years of living, but let's go with this quote attributed to Danny Kaye-

"Life is a great big canvas. Throw all the paint on it you can." 

2. Life begins at forty. Agree or disagree? Tell us why. And if not at forty, when?

I think the spirit of this sentiment is somewhat true. I also think life is what you make it at any age, so there's that. For me 40 was probably the age where I felt like I knew myself, gave myself grace when grace was needed, had figured out what real friendship looks like, and felt less need to control the universe. At 40 I realized I wasn't young anymore, but I wasn't old either and I embraced that. 

Now in my fifties I pitched a minor rebellion but in my 40's all was well. 

3. Share a favorite book, song, or quote with a number featured in it somewhere.

Let's go with books today. I'm sharing several that I loved because I'm not good at just one-

The Million Dollar Boy by Monica Wood
A Thousand Splendid Suns by Khaled Hosseini
The Thirteenth Tale by Diane Setterfield
One Thousand White Women: The Journals of May Dodd by Jim Fergus

4. A picture's worth a thousand words, a stitch in time saves nine, back to square one, catch-22, on cloud nine, my two cents...pick a number phrase and tell us how it applies to your life currently.

Catch 22 feels like it fits. There are a couple of definitions, but I think 'a situation presenting two equally undesirable solutions' is the thesis of our current social distancing predicament. 

Stay away and potentially stay well while the economy crashes.
Revive the economy with business as usual and face a potential health care crisis. 

Ugh. I feel for the people in charge trying to make decisions in this confusing and uncertain time we find ourselves navigating. 

5. Last time you drove more than 40 miles from home? More than 400 miles from home? Where were you going? Was it before or after this current season of social distancing?

I honestly don't think I've been more than 40 miles from home since the stay home way of living began, which for us was April 7th. We'd been at it a week or two prior, and since then I've only been to a couple of local grocery stores and the plant nursery, all of which are less than 40 miles from here. 

Hubs and I did drive to Florida to visit friends in early March before this whole thing started and that was definitely more than 400 miles. We enjoy road trips, and I think that's the wave of the future at least for the short term. Not sure when we'll be boarding an airplane again to jet off somewhere fun. 

6. Insert your own random thought here.

Daughter1 gave the hubs a hammock for Christmas and now that it's hammock weather we ordered a stand so we could get it set up. Y'all. It is ginormous. This stand rivals Noah's Ark in size. I look like the princess and the pea in this picture. 

It is so incredibly comfy and now we just need to figure out where to put it. Currently it's sitting on the lower driveway which has a great view of the lake, but I picture myself tipping out onto the concrete so we'll likely need to relocate. Maybe the hillside once we level out a space in the mulch there. 

And yes I know it's technically hubs hammock but there's plenty of room for two. 

Same as the Ark. 

The Roaring 40's

If you're looking for this week's Hodgepodge questions you'll find them in the post before this one. 

I know technically that term 'roaring' is linked with the 20's, but I'm talking age today not world culture, so The Roaring 40's it is. My roaring 40's.

A while back (two years if you're counting) I asked a question in my weekly Hodgepodge wanting people to describe their 20's in a single sentence. I enjoyed reading their answers so much so that I eventually wrote an entire post reflecting on my 20's some three decades out (you'll find it here), and later two posts about my 30's (here and here). My plan was to hit all the decades, but you know what they say about plans.

Since I've officially entered the year of a 'big birthday' I wanted to come back to the decades I missed and revisit them in the form of a blog post or two.  Today that means The Roaring 40's. Like your 20s only better because there's less striving and more seizing the day.

I've written bits and pieces about this decade over the course of my blog's life, but these reflection posts are more about life lessons learned, and how a particular season looks in the rear view mirror.

My 40's started with hubs planning a fun birthday surprise, a weekend away in a cute little B & B on Maryland's Eastern Shore. He even managed to sneak my mom into town to stay with our girls which meant so much to me. I wrote about it in great detail in a post linked here so I'm not going to say more about that now.

What I will say is people freak out a little bit when this birthday approaches, but when my 40th rolled around I felt great. Vibrant, relevant, mentally sharp, and looking towards the future with anticipation and delight. I was physically healthy, and also really happy in marriage, motherhood, and the wider world as I knew it. Of all the decades this one holds a tender place in my heart.

My girls were in grades 5 and 7 when I entered my 40's and were university students when the decade drew to a close. In between there was a whole lotta life lived. A lot a lot. On a grand global scale we had 9-11, war in the desert, the housing crisis, and economic collapse. On a personal level there were job changes, an overseas move, middle school-high school-college for the kids, and so many new people, places, and experiences shared it would be impossible to list them all here.

What I see when I look back at any decade is how God orchestrated the events of one season to make me ready for the next and this one was no exception. I started my 40's living in a sweet little town beside the bay, a place we all loved and where my family of four had become comfortably comfortable. Maybe even a teensy bit complacent? I don't mean complacent in the sense we weren't busy working-going-doing, but more life is good and let's not look for ways to rock the boat k?

Except what if the boat is meant to be rocked now and then?
What if it's better, stronger and more sea-worthy if it's rocked from time to time?

There's nothing wrong with living a comfortable life, but I know me and sometimes when I get too comfortable with something I hold on with a tightly clenched fist. Two tighly clenched fists. And God is always teaching me to cling tightly to just one thing-Him. I finally figured that out in my 40's, but it took being catapulted from the ordinary every day familiar into something new and different before it stuck.

I've written probably more than anyone wants to read about moving overseas as a 43 year old grown woman who had been perfectly fine thank you very much, right where she was, only to discover she still had some growing to do and a new home and country were just the place to do it. We traded life in America for life across the pond at what I can see now was absolutely perfect timing, although for young teenagers it maybe didn't feel like it.

My 40-something self had a heap of anxiety percolating on the inside too, but I went with what has worked for moms since the dawn of time. I slapped a smile on my face and repeated my oft repeated mantra -every little thing is gonna be alright.

And it was.

One of the miracles of parenting is that we moms and dads learn a lot of life's most important lessons as we walk beside our tweens and teens, and I had one of each when we hopped the pond. 'Cept we didn't call them tweens back then.

We did talk a lot about the new millennium but had no idea they'd be dubbed with that moniker some twenty years later. Sorry kids!

I spent most of my 40's in the UK and traveled extensively while I was there. My kids even more so, and hubs most of all, but more than the traveling it was the everyday living that changed us in ways that mattered and lasted.

I think I need ten years to write about ten years, but since we don't have that kind of time I'll wrap it up with a few priceless (to me) treasures unearthed in my 40's that I've carried in my pocket ever since-

There is great value in periodically examining the direction of my life and deciding if a course correction is needed. Am I doing what God created me to do, or am I living from habit?

I am capable of learning and doing hard things, things outside my imaginary comfort zone.

God's timing is providential and perfect and sometimes we might need a little bit of hindsight to see just how true that really is.

I can trust Him with my kids. Really trust Him. This has served me well every year since as my daughters have spread their wings and flown in ways my 40-something self could not have imagined or predicted.

It's a small big world and it is beautiful.

'If I rise on the wings of the dawn, if I settle on the far side of the sea, even there Your hand will guide me, Your right hand will hold me fast." Psalm 139:9-10

Wherever I roam there He is.