So my forties and I, we\u2019re in the home stretch.<\/p>\n
On a lot of levels, I\u2019m sad to tell my forties goodbye. It probably sounds strange, but I feel like we\u2019re a couple of BFFs who can\u2019t bear to leave one another at the end of summer camp. We really hit it off when I was around forty-two and stopped operating out of fear so much of the time, and since then my forties and I have taken a lot of chances, laughed an obnoxious amount, cried as often as necessary, and high-fived more than might be considered normal. We have decided once and for all that there are few things we enjoy more than some simple pleasures: a family road trip, an ice-cold pitcher of Crystal Light lemonade, a really good college football game, a folding chair under a tailgate tent, a fall night on a back porch, a summer afternoon at the lake, a lunch with friends that stretches to the two-hour mark, and a high school lacrosse match on an early April evening.<\/p>\n
This is the stuff, my friends.<\/p>\n
This last decade hasn\u2019t been perfect or even idyllic\u2014not by a long shot. For sure there have been mistakes and also regrets. From time to time I\u2019ve gotten too big for my britches (literally and figuratively, AMIRITE), and the last few years have also been challenging in ways I didn\u2019t necessarily expect. There have been injuries, illness, loss, and my dear friend delayed grief \u2013 to the point that when grieving finally kicked in, I wondered if I needed to wear one of those MedicAlert necklaces so people would know what was going on with me.<\/p>\n
She\u2019s grieving! And she can\u2019t get up!<\/em><\/p>\n It\u2019s interesting. I think one reason I\u2019ve loved my forties is because even though it hasn\u2019t been easy, I\u2019ve been less resistant to learning the lessons than I was when I was younger. And hands down one of the biggest lessons has been that sometimes, when the Lord puts me in a place of change or transition\u2014when He\u2019s moving me from one thing to the next\u2014I can be quick to panic, to manipulate, to control, to resist, to fight, to complain, and to question.<\/p>\n It\u2019s a side of myself I\u2019ve seen far too often in these last few years\u2014a time when the Lord has let me sit in some heartache and disappointment, a time when He has been teaching me to see things as they actually are and not as I wish they might be.<\/p>\n So here\u2019s what that has looked like: I\u2019ve mourned the deaths of people I love and have tried to wrap my heart around living in a world without them. I\u2019ve sometimes parented out of fear instead of conviction\u2014over-analyzing and worrying as if that might actually make a difference\u2014and in moments of great impatience, I\u2019ve tried to boss my own child into repentance even though we all know that never<\/em> works. I\u2019ve minimized the work it takes to keep a marriage healthy and loving. I\u2019ve been quick to dismiss ideas that aren\u2019t mine and to criticize philosophies I don\u2019t share. I\u2019ve been angry with the evangelical church (that I love) and frustrated with my country (that I love). I\u2019ve seen hatred hiding in places I thought were sacred, which means I\u2019ve had to consider the ways I\u2019ve been complicit in ignorance and injustice and oppression. I\u2019ve wrestled with my pride, I\u2019ve been humbled by how often I\u2019ve failed, and I\u2019ve contemplated the bottomlessness of my selfishness. I\u2019ve talked so much more than necessary, knowing that there are still so many places where I need to listen and learn.<\/p>\n And for better or worse, in some ways that embarrass me and some ways that make me proud, my forties and I have confronted all of those things standing eyeball-to-eyeball. We\u2019ve tried our best to work it out.<\/p>\n We\u2019ve worked it out despite broken bones and hormone surges and a bladder that can no longer be trusted. We\u2019ve settled down and settled in and committed to real-live life in ways I couldn\u2019t have fathomed ten years ago. We\u2019ve (mostly) said good-bye to the angst-y comparison of my thirties and the approval seeking of my twenties. My forties have centered on asking some big questions and figuring out how to make my peace with the answers.<\/p>\n So yes. The last several years have been filled with transition. Change. Uncertainty.\u00a0<\/p>\n But Jesus has met me at every turn.\u00a0<\/p>\n \u00a0<\/p>\n Excerpt taken from<\/em>\u00a0Stand All the Way Up<\/a>, Sophie Hudson<\/em>.<\/p>\n \u00a0<\/p>\n Sophie Hudson\u00a0<\/strong><\/em>Written in her trademark style of humor, sass, and spiritual insight, beloved and hilarious Sophie Hudson<\/a> offers\u00a0Stand All the Way Up <\/i><\/a>\u2014 a collection of stories revealing the God who teaches you to stand up for yourself, stand up for the people you love, stand up for the people who can\u2019t, and stand up for the Kingdom.<\/p>","protected":false},"excerpt":{"rendered":"","protected":false},"author":428,"featured_media":10078,"comment_status":"closed","ping_status":"closed","sticky":false,"template":"","format":"standard","meta":{"_seopress_titles_title":"","_seopress_titles_desc":"Beloved author Sophie Hudson motivates women to stand up for themselves, the people they love, the people who can't, and the Kingdom.","_seopress_robots_index":"","_seopress_robots_follow":"","_seopress_robots_imageindex":"","_seopress_robots_snippet":"","_seopress_robots_primary_cat":"0","_seopress_robots_breadcrumbs":"","_seopress_robots_freeze_modified_date":"","_seopress_robots_custom_modified_date":"","_seopress_robots_canonical":"","_seopress_social_fb_title":"","_seopress_social_fb_desc":"","_seopress_social_fb_img":"","_seopress_social_fb_img_attachment_id":0,"_seopress_social_fb_img_width":0,"_seopress_social_fb_img_height":0,"_seopress_social_twitter_title":"","_seopress_social_twitter_desc":"","_seopress_social_twitter_img":"","_seopress_social_twitter_img_attachment_id":0,"_seopress_social_twitter_img_width":0,"_seopress_social_twitter_img_height":0,"_seopress_redirections_value":"","_seopress_redirections_enabled":"","_seopress_redirections_enabled_regex":"","_seopress_redirections_logged_status":"","_seopress_redirections_param":"","_seopress_redirections_type":0,"_seopress_analysis_target_kw":"forties and Jesus","_seopress_news_disabled":"","_seopress_video_disabled":"","_seopress_video":[],"_seopress_pro_schemas_manual":[],"_seopress_pro_rich_snippets_disable_all":"","_seopress_pro_rich_snippets_disable":[],"_seopress_pro_schemas":[],"_jetpack_feature_clip_id":0,"_jetpack_memberships_contains_paid_content":false,"footnotes":""},"categories":[100,102],"tags":[454,585,46,2487,2674,2675,79,477,99],"class_list":["post-10071","post","type-post","status-publish","format-standard","has-post-thumbnail","hentry","category-faith","category-relationships","tag-change","tag-control","tag-death","tag-decade","tag-forties","tag-hormones","tag-jesus","tag-lessons","tag-lord"],"jetpack_sharing_enabled":true,"jetpack_featured_media_url":"","_links":{"self":[{"href":"https:\/\/www.themom.co\/fr\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/posts\/10071","targetHints":{"allow":["GET"]}}],"collection":[{"href":"https:\/\/www.themom.co\/fr\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/posts"}],"about":[{"href":"https:\/\/www.themom.co\/fr\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/types\/post"}],"author":[{"embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/www.themom.co\/fr\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/users\/428"}],"replies":[{"embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/www.themom.co\/fr\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/comments?post=10071"}],"version-history":[{"count":0,"href":"https:\/\/www.themom.co\/fr\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/posts\/10071\/revisions"}],"wp:attachment":[{"href":"https:\/\/www.themom.co\/fr\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/media?parent=10071"}],"wp:term":[{"taxonomy":"category","embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/www.themom.co\/fr\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/categories?post=10071"},{"taxonomy":"post_tag","embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/www.themom.co\/fr\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/tags?post=10071"}],"curies":[{"name":"wp","href":"https:\/\/api.w.org\/{rel}","templated":true}]}}
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