Once again life is changing almost more than I know how to handle it.
Did you have any stereotypes about middle-age when you were a kid? I remember thinking middle-aged life would be all settled and normal and boring. There were all those stories of men going through "mid-life crisis", of buying fast cars and chasing younger women, which seemed to happen mostly because their life had settled into such boring monotony. Funny, too, how the mid-life crisis stereotype rarely included middle-aged women. I expected, if I thought about it at all, to be happily living the life that I had been preparing for all my youth and young adulthood.
Well, I'm here now - full middle-age - and my life is anything but what I expected and it seems like things are always changing.
For years my husband, children and I had settled into some very regular routines, ways of communicating, ways of doing things. Then at the beginning of this year my father-in-law moved in with us and much of our routine has been thrown into disarray. Along with this new complexity has come a deep richness - it is a good thing - but it can be very challenging sometimes as well.
One of the hardest things is that as I have gotten older the introverted part of me has grown and I have craved more time to be really alone. This has been hard for the last few years as my husband has been unemployed for much of the time, but now I can never really predict when the house will be busy or empty. While in theory I value the idea of a healthy vibrant household, with people coming and going, I have found that adapting to that reality is more challenging that I imagined. One of my major goals right now is to be purposeful about spending time alone, and it's been hard to do.
So many other things have been changing this year. My husband has been pretty ill with gut problems and very time-demanding special dietary needs (requiring countless hours of planning, shopping and cooking). Thankfully we may be seeing the light at the end of the tunnel with that - we finally found a good nutritionist who is helping us a lot - and my husband is feeling better and hopefully will get even better soon.
This is just in time, as there is a potential for my husband to work into a job in an area he is passionate about (and which is a complete change of career for him). He has been volunteering in this area for years and it would be wonderful if he could get this job! It is a good time for him to be feeling better.
In all of these issues, the one constant has been that we don't really know what is going to happen next - not exactly my old image of a settled and normal middle-age.
At the same time that my husband has been pretty ill, and my kids have their regular needs for structure and school preparations and etc..., my mother has had surgery to have a very large tumor removed. I went to my parent's house for a week to help them through the surgery time and we are still working out how they will handle her transportation and care needs during her upcoming weeks of daily radiation treatment. My mom has had the care-taker role for my father in his illness for many years, so it is challenging for everyone in our family for her to be going through this. She's also one of my closest friends, so this has been hard emotionally as well as logistically.
It seems like life is all about change right now, in things big and small. The part-time job that I thought I had, then I found out right before I expected it to start that I didn't have after all, and with that the loss of the sense of having a place that was "mine" that I could count on going to three days a week. The lessons that I thought I had all arranged for the girls, only to find that the instructors had life changes and nothing is set and scheduled any more. The sunday school teaching partner that I thought I was scheduled to work with again this year, except that I must have goofed in communication and I may need to start over and work with a new partner.
David asked me why my new profile asks "Who am I?" I think I have too often defined who I am in my life by the roles that I have. I also think it is easy to confuse "calling" and "roles" and our identity in Christ. So every day now I am asking God to help me see who I am in Him, to sense what He is calling me to in this phase of my life, to understand what my roles in life are right now and how to best fulfill them. I do not feel like I can take anything for granted - though I constantly find that I have.
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4 comments:
wow - big changes!
i like 'second journey' instead of mid-life - it's far more life giving.
i will be praying about your hubby's health and job prospects.
I understand change... I will be keeping you in my prayers.
humm . . . several things bubbled in my head as i read this . . .
stereotypes about middle-age have changed a lot since our parents became middle-age . . .
several things are going through my mind about your husband’s illness, about how you and the children manage that . . . people can be empathic to someone that is ill . . . but . . . it is more rare that people ask how my wife is doing . . . it happens but it’s more rare . . . yet the reality is I think that living with someone who is ill is more difficult for the healthy person than it is for the person who is ill . . . i really understand how illness can create unpredictable aspects to life . . .
when I either stay up later at night or get up early and the house is quiet . . . that’s one of my favorite times of the day . . . alone . . . reading blogs, books. articles, or writing in my journal . . . posting . . . now that it’s fall once and a while because my body is cold natured I make a fire in the wood stove to take the chill out of the room . . . warm coffee a warm fire and reading all morning . . . the truth is at times I struggle with frustration that someone is waking up . . . and my time will end of being ‘alone’ when I’m not finished . . . I am learning that while this sounds good there are aspects of this introversion that is not good . . . at times I “retreat” into books so much that it inhibits my relatinships with others . . . and that is not a good quality of these habits . . . so I push myself away from them at times . . . for my own good . . .
bobbie - thanks!
fish - yes, I know you are well acquainted with change, and I appreciate your prayers.
david - yeah, the stereotypes have changed, but my memory is filled with the ideas I formed when I was young... sometimes I think of all those 70's TV shows we watched, and laugh at how different reality is.
Thanks for all your thoughts, I appreciate them... I especially long to have some of those morning hours before the rest of the family arises - but it is not my natural bodily bent to get up early and it is hard to learn new habits, and hard to get to sleep early enough to be rested enough to get up... and I'm not sure if this comes out of my introversion, but I too can easily spend too long buried in a book, I've actually had to almost cut out my pleasure reading becuase of my lack of self-control - I lose too much sleep and leave too many things undone when I start a good book...
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