September 27th: Another Opportunity.
Our adventure in Maine. 2025.
I told a student yesterday, "I know this may sound strange to you, but after you pass 40, you have to stop to think about how old you are when your birthday comes around." Her response was shocked, "No way!! I am sure that will not happen to me!"
But 16 years isn't that hard to keep track of. What about when your life collects decades? I sat this morning with pen in hand, paper, thoughts, feelings...I let myself sit with my collective years. Flying over the story of my life. There were tears. And gratitude. It’s tough to reconcile another birthday as I grieve the lives of those I have lost over months and years of living.
Birthdays are opportunities. Maybe the opportunity to get that one wish you wrote on the top your list, maybe the money to buy a treat for yourself, something you've wanted. but couldn’t justify. But that is not what I am referring to here. When I say "opportunity," I mean the possibility of looking at and listening to your life. The life you have been given.
The Lived Life.
The lived life holds failure and loss, congratulations and accomplishments...noticing, preferring, garnering courage, and shying away in fear. It’s a grab-bag of everything you hate and love. Likewise, there are people you collect, and ones you let go of; there are wounds that, though old, can still make you cry out of nowhere. There is pain you have inflicted on others, which is heartbreaking and tragic, but true. And somehow, in the river of all of this, you realize there is a story here that is far beyond what you could write. As Wendell Berry says, "We live the given life, not the planned."
And as Dan Allender says, “Wisdom ultimately isn’t a formula or a conclusion but a way of being in the world that leads to a more truthful and more beautiful good” (To Be Told).
Today, this morning, I took a long pause. This was the day I entered the world 54 years ago. It’s surreal, so much change has been written into the last decade of my life. Good change. Changes that have forced the reversal of some parts of me I didn’t know I needed reversed. It seems it has to happen from the outside. A Holy, external influence. In time, I have endured a fundamental and multi-faceted shift.
I had no idea it was happening.
What mattered to me in the past has slowly been erased from the list. I don't need to have 50 friends. I can surrender the need to bring some tectonic contribution to the world. I can release the subtle pressure to make sure everyone is cared for. Money is best when given away. The skill of listening is more valuable than a bulky 401K. Maybe faithfulness, gentleness, and self-control are underrated.
Today, the ship appears to have a broken navigation system. Wrong has become right, and right has become wrong. Virtue has been trampled by the stampede of greed and power. But it hasn't been extinguished; it just found another place to set up residence. Hidden and tucked away, out of the public fray. It shines around the table with good food and friends who remind me of who I want to be. On my street, with my neighbors, who plant flowers, take care of our dog, and share their kids with us. It shows up when visiting my parents who tell me stories of the legacy-leavers in our family and who live out their own humble legacy right in front of me. I experience REAL life on the Brandywine River as the Kingfisher darts over me, leading me downstream. It's longtime friends who don't try to impress people anymore and remind me that I don't need to either. It's the podcast with that pregnant comment from Barbara Brown Taylor, so important that you need to pull over to write it down. Like this one:
"Life is not a train you get on and go straight to the destination. It is a sailboat. Storms included."
Creation groans, and with it, I do, too. And then I remember that Jesus wept, looking out over Jerusalem. He wanted so much to gather his people under his wings, but they wanted to make their own way. I do, too.
It's September 27th, and I feel especially aware of the question: "Dawn, who do you want to be? What old patterns need to be shed? What does it mean to love people? What can you learn from those who are easy to ignore? With all the chaos of our Babel-times, all the technology clatter and disorder, do you think you can show up as a contrast, a warm presence?"
A contrast.
That's it.
Yes, I want to be a contrast.
Most days, I sound like a clanging gong. My desire to be winsome gets lost in the fire of my passion. Midlife has humbled me. If you read anything I write, you have heard me say that many times. The much-needed crucible of 5 decades.
So what was the best gift I got today?
My dear friend, who happens to be my husband, has a habit of going out every morning to a local spot where wildflowers, goldfinch, and the occasional mink afford him the peace he needs to connect with God. Just beyond the river. Books, journal, and a master pour-over in tow...Today, when he got back, he sat on the couch asking me if he could share what he reflected on and wrote about. A not-so-typical gift, he gave me spoken words. Like an Old Testament Blessing, he read a long list of qualities he has observed in me over the years of our rather short marriage. He named things like courage (which is the last word I would use to describe myself), an empathetic heart that carries a heaviness for the brokenness of the world and the suffering of its creatures, curiosity, and a unique ability to integrate what I read and learn into everyday life and conversation. He said I have wonder activated at all times, “a woman of wonder…i.e. Wonder-Woman (😊), and that I live my life in a state of delight over simple things like birds, books, and whatever else I happen to share real time with…contagious to those around me.
I don't say this to toot my horn. It was difficult to sit still and take it in. Words I don’t associate with myself, but are helpful to receive. Descriptions I want to accept because I have a God who wrote them into me. All of us need to do this for one another--call out the things we see and notice in the lives of those with whom we share space, meals, drinks, and time.... To NAME and VALIDATE, and CELEBRATE what God intentionally crafted with detail inside each of us. I also share this because we forget what specific, generous, words can do for us. We forget their power. Too often today, we use them like countermeasure attacks.
And here is the last thing I want to share with you--as Eugene Peterson said, "What is essential is to know that the Christian life is mostly what is being done to you, not what you are doing" (The Wisdom of Each Other). We have the option to cooperate with God. We are not the generators of change or growth. It is not in our power to put to death the stubborn and selfish parts of us--we seek Him to do that. Sometimes the work is agonizing. Often, we don’t even know we need it. When my husband read that long list, and I sat with tears requiring at least 10 tissues, I had one takeaway: