my 30s come to an end!

Today is the last day of my 30s!

I am a 7 on the Enneagram, which means that I love to find ways to have fun, I love to plan and anticipate fun, I like variety and expansive vision, and I do not like pain of any kind.

It means a lot of other things too, of course. 

I have known my Enneagram number for more than 15 years, but it was during my 30s that I really started to do any work with it and to learn more about how I instinctively respond to stress, to disappointment, to feelings (mine and other people's), to loss, etc. It is not an exaggeration to say that doing Enneagram work is one of the three most important personal choices I've made in the past decade. And at least one of those other important choices was heavily informed by that work!

The Enneagram is a tool for spiritual transformation, because it enables us to see how our instinctive motivation drives us, and then allows us to make shifts that change our trajectories into more Christlike ways. It has had an impact on my self, my spirituality, my relationships, and my leadership style. It's not a panacea or magic, it's work just like any other inner work, but it is worth every moment of the doing, even when it's hard or painful. And you know that if the pain-avoidant 7 says that, it's really worth it.

Fascinatingly, when I started this 30 day countdown, I did not plan the topics of each day in advance, nor did I choose the poetry ahead of time. Often the topics came to me during the day -- through the various tasks of the day, or the reading of the day, or just out of the blue. Which means that I have not actually picked a poem for this last day of my 30s. It seems like the kind of thing I ought to have done, to choose the end point I wanted to get to...but perhaps it's because it isn't an end, just a turning, that I haven't. 

All the poems I've read this month have been by women, often non-white women, because I think it is important to have a wide variety of literary experiences (and I'm a 7, I want a wide variety of EVERY kind of experience, ever!) to form us into the people we are created to be. But the snippet that keeps coming to mind as I think over these past 30 days and the (hopefully) years to come is actually from TS Eliot. I hate that I'm about to be predictable in my final poetic choice of my 30s, but doesn't it seem just right that 

We shall not cease from exploration

And the end of all our exploring

Will be to arrive where we started 

And know the place for the first time.

I think that is the ultimate goal of Enneagram work -- to lead us through the explorations of ourselves and our relationship to ourselves, God, other people, and the world, so that we can find our way back to the essence of who we are called to be, and live from that deepest reality and truth.

So...happy birthday to me!

Today

my 30th birthday party

The penultimate day of my 30s

in the centre of the maze at some palace in London, spring 2016....
this expression is the one I could always hear on the phone, too.

I never expected to end my 30s an orphan.

My birthday will mark 15 years since I last heard my mother's voice, and writing that sentence still takes my breath away.

It's also now 10 months and 19 days since I heard my dad's voice.

My mother was 47 years, 2 months, and 10 days old when she died. My dad was 59 and 1 month, according to his death certificate, though that's probably a few days too generous. 

And now here we are, and I am 39 years and 364 days old. Throughout my 30s I have been acquainted with the ups and downs of a lifetime of grief, how waves come and go when least expected, and how sometimes when you most expect it, there's numbness instead. But even after being motherless for all the major life events of my 30s, I still did not see it coming that I'd have no parents in my 40s.

My dad was prone to the most ridiculous phone calls -- he would phone at strange hours because he never quite worked out the time zones (whether I was 2 hours or 8 hours ahead of him it always seemed just a bit beyond him!). He would call and literally say nothing and I was always making faces at the phone as I tried to figure out how to get more than a one syllable answer. He repeatedly apologised for voting for Reagan that one time, and swore that he'd always voted a straight Democratic ticket at every other election, because he wanted a country that was safe and good for me as well as my brother. He once promised that if I sent him a cookbook for Christmas, he would go vegetarian for a year. (Except for fish, because who could give up salmon? I chose not to argue the point, and sent a cookbook....a cookbook I now have on my own shelf, with all his sticky notes flagging recipes he tried.) 

I spent a lot of vacations in my 30s traveling with my dad -- which means that I planned and he paid. We visited all sorts of places and even though I was often annoyed at his complete lack of a sense of direction and his inability to tell me if he was having a good time or not while we were actually there, when we went home he always called to tell me how much fun he'd had. 

When I made a mistake on my taxes, and then made a worse mistake in fixing that first mistake, and then was too embarrassed to admit that mistake for about 5 years, he rescued me, and finally did so without a lecture about how to read my bank statement.

All those years I was desperate to be a real grown up and at the same time so grateful that my dad was there to help when I couldn't make it work...and yet I still never saw this day coming, when I wouldn't get a birthday card that said nothing but "love Dad", or a midnight phone call with his half-laugh. 

It's been so long since I reconciled myself to the reality that I never get to have a grown-up friendship with my mom...I wasn't really prepared for not having one with my dad either. 

So I suppose the lesson is one I didn't have time to use: treasure those bizarre phone calls and weird gifts and exhausting holidays. 

Today's poem is a song by Carrie Newcomer...because it really is how I think of my life, as before (when I had parents) and after. And I think it describes my dad's life too....before Halloween 2005, and after. 

3 days left of my 30s

I was in my 30s the first time a friend moved away, rather than me being the one who moved away. I had moved a lot in my life (in fact I often use the number of addresses I've had as one of the things I say whenever I play "two truths and a lie"), and apparently had lived 30 years without ever registering that I was always the one leaving.

It was a very strange and surreal feeling, when friends decided to move -- and they only moved a several-hours-drive away, not even super ridiculously far. We still saw each other, just obviously less frequently than before. But going from a couple of times a week to maybe once every 6 weeks was a shock to the system.

A few years later, friends moved much much farther away, like practically into never-see-you-again territory, and I'm not sure I'm over that yet, honestly.

It's a weird thing, to always have been the one that left and then suddenly be the one left behind when people went on to new adventures. Even as I type that, it feels so silly, and at the same time weird to think about the two different forms of the word "left" in the one sentence. Perhaps that was part of the issue.

I don't know if I can articulate having learned anything from that, other than to notice that it was a new experience and to finally feel what others must have felt all the times we were the ones to move.

Then, of course, I made a huge move, and even already here I've been the one to go away and leave behind friends (friends made during my placement in Edinburgh...which feels a million miles away during a pandemic, even though it's only 2 hours on a train!). I am hoping to be in this place for a long time, but this is also a place where not many people seem to move away, so hopefully we can be together here for a good long while. Because I don't like goodbyes, really.


Together, by Carrie Williams Clifford (2 of 4 stanzas -- click through for the rest!)

O, come, Love, let us take a walk,

Down the Way-of-Life together;

Storms may come, but what care we,

If be fair or foul the weather.

When the sky overhead is blue,

Balmy, scented winds will after

Us, adown the valley blow

Haunting echoes of our laughter.

the final four days of my 30s

 it's hard to believe that it's finally here -- the last few days of my current decade. 

This week, as you know, I received the delivery of the birthday present I got for myself: a candy apple red Kitchen Aid stand mixer, with an ice cream maker attachment and a pasta roller attachment. When I moved to Scotland 3.5 years ago, I couldn't bring my Kitchen Aid with me, because the electrical situation is different, so I sent it to my aunt -- but I kept the attachments. My former KitchenAid and its attachments had been my mother's.

Unpacking those attachments, the very last things to be unpacked from my move, 2.5 years after they arrived in this house, was so beautiful.

Having said that, during these last few years of my 30s, when I was sans mixer, I learned how to make lots of my favourite things by hand. I never would have thought I would make bagels by hand, because the dough is so stiff, but I do. I never would have thought I'd be hand-whipping cream, or making pasta, or any number of other things, without a stand mixer. 

Of course, one day I stood in the kitchen pining for bagels, and therefore a KitchenAid, and realised that obviously bagels used to be made without a mixer. Clearly people have been making bread, and whipped cream, and all sorts of things by hand for generations. And so I took out my mom's bagel recipe and just...figured it out. And they were delicious. 

In the kitchen I often feel connected to my mother -- it used to be because I used her things, but now, here, when I do not have her things anymore, sometimes it is because I use her recipes. Or perhaps, more accurately, because I carry on her tenuous relationship to the recipe. How fitting, then, that I should have learned in this decade to adapt them further to do it by hand.

I have put a lot of muscle into stirring and kneading these past few years, and I actually wonder, now that I have the mixer, if I will still knead by hand, because I like it. And maybe I will. But it'll be nice to get the hard mixing-in-all-the-flour part done first! Even though I now have a danish whisk (best hand tool for the kitchen that was ever invented), and I love it, there's something to be said for just standing back and pouring the flour through the spout and letting magic happen.

All of that to say...it is possible to make many of my old favourites without the equipment. But I'm still pretty excited to enter my next decade with the equipment anyway!

Today's poem is "When I am in the kitchen" by Jeanne Marie Beaumont, and it ends with this:

Oh the past is too much with me in the kitchen,
where I open the vintage metal recipe box,
robin's egg blue in its interior, to uncover
the card for Waffles, writ in my father's hand
reaching out from the grave to guide me
from the beginning, "sift and mix dry ingredients"
with his note that this makes "3 waffles in our
large pan" and around that our an unbearable
round stain—of egg yolk or melted butter?—
that once defined a world.

8 days...

With 8 days to go before I turn 40, I thought maybe I'd share something frivolous for a change (ha). It was in my mid-30s that I finally learned to wear flat shoes.

Until 2016, I only ever wore heels except for when running. I had (ok, still have) loads of shoes, and exactly zero of them were flats. Even my flip-flops were wedges! I hated flat shoes, how they felt, how they looked, everything about them.

In 2013 I traipsed around Europe for three weeks beginning on my birthday. I took two pairs of shoes -- one black and one brown. Both had square chunky heels, about 2.5 inches. I walked through cities, I hiked up the hill through the forest to Wartburg Castle, I walked along the Philosophenweg in Heidelberg, I climbed church towers, visited castles, got on and off trains....all in heels. I had a fabulous time.

In 2016 I was planning a trip to London with my dad, and then a trip to Scotland afterwards, including running the Edinburgh half marathon. I decided that 2 weeks in London (including a day trip to Stonehenge), with my dad who was about 8 inches taller than me with very long legs, necessitated flat shoes for a change, and I began a quest. I went to shoe stores, I ordered online, I sent things back, on and on...for months I wore different shoes around the church every day trying to figure out what would be best for a lot of walking and standing and general tourist-ing. I finally settled on a pair of shoes that I love love loved, and which I wore practically nonstop for well over a year. Of course as soon as I wanted to replace them, they were discontinued and I have had no luck finding something as amazing, but now I find that flat shoes are my preference, which I never would have expected ten years ago, or even five!

I still wear heels for most Sundays and for occasions, and I love them. But my collection of everyday shoes (still lined up beside the door, as they always have been!) is now entirely flats! It's a fascinating change from my previous fashion sense. Who knows, maybe one day I'll find heels that can carry me on my constant walking (since I don't drive), or maybe I'll just keep expanding the selection until I find the next favourite like those ones I found ind 2016. 

Of course, in 2020 the reality is that since I hardly ever leave the house, I basically don't wear shoes anymore. But one day, shoes will be a thing again!

Therefore, who doesn't love a poem about shoes? this is the middle of the poem:

...

The point is, shoes are important and they are a vehicle for all sorts of messages 

about life and death and love and morality and symbolism

so tell me what it means when the shoe fits

or doesn’t

tell me what it means when parts have to be cut off 

and blood drips from a shoe — 

tattle-tale of the wrong one, the wrong girl,

more fraud than trickster we can’t always mix our metaphors on this;

tell me what it means to be sensible and worthy

to have shoes that bring you back home with three clicks — 

an American fairy tale,I know, I know, tell me what it means 

to follow the path through the woods, 

leaving a trail or covering tracks, 

tell me what it means 

to walk down the stairs and 

keep the shoes on this time

or to go barefoot — 

done with it all, uncivilized perhaps, or post-civilized by now; 

we have seen what footwear can do 

...

I still love and miss these shoes. If you or anyone know know works for Merrell, please bring them back ASAP.

9 days!

 Ok, so....it seems that one of the things it took me until the very end of my 30s to learn is that I may not have actually learned 30 blog-worthy things in this decade. 

Sure, I've learned plenty. I don't mean that to sound arrogant. Rather, I mean...how does one distill thirty things and have them be meaningful enough to actually spend time writing or reading about? 

Not that I think all the things I've managed in the first 12 days or these last 9 will be actually worth spending time writing and reading about. Far from it. (wait for tomorrow's, haha)
In any case, let's call this...during this decade, I learned that sometimes in mid-project, I need a break. And this time I won't promise I'm going to make up the days, because we all know that's not how this is going to go, so I am not going to pretend. That in itself may be a big enough lesson to warrant its own blog post: that it can be okay not to pretend that the break never happened. 

It did happen. And we are in the midst of a global trauma when I have been trying to remind people that our capacity for productivity is not likely to be what it normally is, and it is okay to need a break, to care for ourselves, and to allow space for fallowness where once creativity bubbled. Sometimes we run out of words. And sometimes they will come back in a quick rush that doesn't last as long as we would like, and then we need a nap.

So...mark this past week of blog-silence as: the week I learned to take my own advice, not simply offer it to others.

The poem my friend Elsa sent me for yesterday is basically perfect for this lesson: "After a time" by Luci Shaw. It starts off like this:

After a time of writing

I stop to let my mind breathe.

This is necessary, otherwise

the thoughts turn gray and

drift.

And, well...yep. That's what happened. I'm hopefully back for this home stretch now, though! See you tomorrow.

this is what I look at when I need to let my mind breathe

18 days of my 30s

 On the 18th day before I turn 40...

my brother is getting married today and because of covid restrictions, I can't be there. 

Perhaps the worst lesson of my 30s is "life in a global pandemic."

(ok, fine, there are some good lessons from this time too, but...honestly the overriding feeling today is not of good lessons, but sadness that I'm going to watch my brother's wedding on FB live because travel isn't possible.)

I'm sure there's a poem for this, but I don't want there to be.

counting down...19 more days!

I know some people learn this much earlier than I did.

And some much later....or never.

But it is true whenever it sinks in:

When you don't have anything to say, it's better to keep your mouth shut.

(a slight variation on "if you don't have anything nice to say"....because it applies to all sorts of situations!)

When I was 25 and being examined for ordination by a presbytery committee, an elder on the search committee at RCLPC (who drove me to said examination) reminded me how to answer questions. He took a pen out of his pocket and asked, "do you know what this is?" and I said, "yes." 

(Lesson: Always just answer the question you're asked, not the one you're not!)

In the coming years of ministry I would learn that lesson applies to things other than questions. It applies to preaching...and writing...and pastoral care...and session meetings...and, for the love of God, Presbytery/General Assembly meetings! if you don't have anything to add to what has already been said, keep your mouth closed. 

It applies to blogging too. And today....well....I will put it into practice. 😂

20 days of my 30s...

Just to right-size expectations at the outset: I can't be a good writer every day. To paraphrase Anne Lamott...it matters more to sit down and do the writing.

Today's poem is one that has resonated for a lot of women over the years -- after so long being told no, the idea that maybe God has a broader vision for us than the circumscribed life offered to us just feels...right. 

God Says Yes To Me

Kaylin Haught

I asked God if it was okay to be melodramatic

and she said yes

I asked her if it was okay to be short

and she said it sure is

I asked her if I could wear nail polish

or not wear nail polish

and she said honey

she calls me that sometimes

she said you can do just exactly

what you want to 

Thanks God I said

And is it even okay if I don’t paragraph

my letters

Sweetcakes God said

who knows where she picked that up

what I’m telling you is

Yes Yes Yes

I have to admit that all the things mentioned in this poem are a part of my life: melodramatic? check. short? check. sometimes with nail polish and sometimes without? check. don't paragraph!??!?!? check.

But I'm also going to apply this poem to something it was never intended for. And which is, at least on the surface, far more frivolous:

I was in my 30s when I learned (from my fabulous aunt) that YOU CAN MAKE RISOTTO IN A PRESSURE COOKER. And it takes 7 minutes. Seven minutes!!!! No stirring! Just beautiful delicious creamy happiness, less than ten minutes after you put the lid on. 

And even better than that (and this is where the misapplication of the poem comes in), you can literally put anything in a risotto. Whatever is in your fridge or pantry will probably make a delicious risotto. I have made pizza risotto, enchilada risotto, last-things-in-the-fridge-before-vacation risotto... 

And sure, purists might claim it isn't really risotto. Maybe they think it's a casserole or a one pot rice dish. But you know what? I asked God if it was okay to make enchilada risotto and God said Yes Yes Yes! Why wouldn't you want something delicious like that?

Sure, the vast majority of the time I end up with mushroom, or sometimes mushroom and leek...sometimes I add greens, or broccoli. But other times I go wild with "toppings" that probably no Italian would ever stir in...and honestly, they don't know what they're missing. 

This lesson from my aunt is probably the most life changing thing, on a practical level. Because now I eat risotto every week, instead of just when I go to a restaurant. And I can turn anything in the kitchen into dinner in 10 minutes. So that's a pretty great thing to carry forward into the rest of my life!

this week I had a carrot and half a head of broccoli languishing a bit....
into the risotto they went.
I added some fresh tomatoes on top to up my 5-a-day quotient, lol.
I made and ate this, and cleaned up, and made a cup of tea to relax a bit,
in the 55 minutes I had between Zoom meetings yesterday.

21 more days!

 Just three weeks to go until, according to the PCUSA and the Young Clergy Women and any number of other organisations that care about such things, I am no longer young.

I used to wonder at what point I got to be a real adult. Just a normal adult. Because the church has programs and staff and resources for "young adults" and "older adults" and honestly it seemed for a long time like the gap in between was getting smaller and smaller.....mainly because our definition of "young" kept creeping up. It used to be 30, then 35, then 40...I'll leave you to figure out why we would need to still be considering 39 year olds who have been in their careers (or their calls, or parenting, or whatever) for nearly 20 years "young."

I have been looking forward to my 40s for a long time, in a way. Though perhaps what I mean is that I've been looking forward to not being considered a "young adult" for a long time. The way we continue to infantilise people (especially women, and especially women without partners or children) who own houses, have jobs, hold positions of power in communities, etc, is so frustrating. I think much of it has to do with white Western culture's fear of growing old. So people say things like "60 is the new 30"...well, you know what? I've said this before and I'll say it again: I hope not. Let's make 60 the new 60, and 40 the new 40. We are living through new times, so why not also live our age in a new way? Just because we reach a number doesn't mean we have to do what previous generations did at that number. 

As a case in point: every firstborn in my family has given birth to their firstborn by age 23. This goes back for....a few generations at least. 

I am a firstborn.

As you might have realised, I have not followed this particular trend in my family system.

In fact, I realised a couple of years ago that I left home -- as in, permanently moved 2,000 miles away -- just two weeks after my mother turned 40. Talk about a terrifying thought as my birthday approaches.

Anyway, even though my 23rd birthday came and went with no children and no husband and even though I had family members saying weird things that they probably didn't even realise were related to that, it wasn't until I was well into my 30s that I realised just how HAPPY I can be as a single woman. I've had relationships, yes, including long term and serious ones, ones I thought would be forever but didn't turn out that way, for good and less-good reasons. But now, and really for at least the last....6 or so years?...I've learned how to be ME. To live alone and love it. To travel alone and love it. To use my resources differently and to bless different people than I would be able to do otherwise. 

Sure, there are things I don't love about being single. Mainly, though, it's about housework. I don't love washing up after cooking, or unloading the dishwasher, or putting away laundry. I don't love that if I get sick, there's no one to help. (especially right now, when there's an illness going around that is more terrifying for single people than those I've encountered before, because of how quickly it can change into something very serious, especially at night.) That tells me I wish for staff, not a partner.

For a few years, the worst thing about being single was feeling like I was no one's priority. Like all my friends and family had people who were their number 1, who topped the list of people they thought about, worried about, etc, and there was no one who would put me on their list of priorities. And rightfully so, because they had partners and children and ageing parents, etc. It was hard work with my therapist to overcome that feeling and to build friendships where I could feel like I mattered in that way to someone else. Because you know what? It's okay to ask for people to treat you like you matter to them. And not every person who is a priority for us is related to us, and that is good and healthy.

The poem I want to share today is on a similar theme, sort of. At least of the idea of being a whole person by myself, and still being important in myself, though the author's experience is very different from mine in many ways. It's called "Today, God" by Starr Davis. I won't reproduce it here, for copyright reasons, but you should 100% click through and listen to the author read the poem!! 

I am liberated and focused today

on what it means to govern myself.

Among my biggest issues being single now: no one to help me eat the dessert.

22 days to 40...sometimes what we want doesn't exist

I went looking for a poem that matched my thoughts for today, but could not find one. I even tried googling "poems for when other words aren't quite right" (and variations on that theme) but while I came across many lovely poems, none were what I wanted.

But of course, what we want doesn't always exist.

I want to pretend that is a lesson I don't have to keep learning over and over, but honestly....no matter how many times I have learned it in the past 40 years, I keep stumbling over the fact that sometimes what I want does not exist. Given that Ecclesiastes says there is nothing new under the sun, I am constantly surprised when I run up against this limitation of the universe. How can it be that in 2020, the thing I want for today is not readily available? (#firstworldproblems)

When Amy and I were in the earliest stages of writing a book, this was actually one of the reasons we decided to do it: because the book we wanted to read and teach from and recommend to friends did not exist. So we worked to bring it into existence. (earlier this month it was in my Facebook memories, in fact, that I held that book in my hands for the first time in September 7 years ago!)

I am no poet, so I will not be bringing a poem into existence to meet this day's needs.

However.

I will note that sometimes....perhaps oftentimes?...when we are longing for something that does not exist, that is a nudge from the Spirit about our calling. Because we live in this place and time in between the vision of God and its realisation, and sometimes it's our creating that brings the kingdom a little more into existence. 

Maybe through poetry. maybe through compassion. maybe through big acts of justice. maybe through writing a book or building a new community or lobbying our government or whatever it is...

it might be yours to do.

or mine.

or ours, together.

photo from the very first time I held the book...on a train, thanks to Anita!

23 days until I'm out of my 30s...

 "What else could they mean?"

This is a question I have learned to ask myself, upon the realisation that honestly, most things are not about me, even if they feel like they are.

When the story I tell myself (thanks Brene Brown for that language) heads down a road of taking things too personally, I now stop to wonder what else someone could mean by what they said. Even if it's outlandish, I try to come up with at least two alternative theories that might explain someone's words or actions, and then I try them all on before deciding that it really was commentary about me/my work/etc. Sometimes, of course, it was meant to be taken personally. But sometimes (most of the time) it really isn't about me at all. 

It's probably been about 5 years since I started asking myself this question and it might be one of the best things I've ever learned for my mental health (right up there with the importance of exercise!).

Feel free to ask it yourself too. So useful!

As Mary Oliver says: there are many ways to perish, or to flourish...one way to perish is to believe everything is about me. And one way, for me anyway, to flourish, is to ask myself what else they could mean -- because not only does that remind me not everything is about me, it also allows me to be more empathetic, to imagine what else is going on with someone and to look through their perspective for a bit, and to perhaps see a new way. 

This is Mary Oliver's poem "Evidence (2)"

There are many way to perish, or to flourish.

How old pain, for example, can stall us at the

threshold of function.

Memory: a golden bowl, or a basement without light.

For which reason the nightmare comes with its

painful story and says: you need to know this.

Some memories I would give anything to forget.

Others I would not give up upon the point of

death, they are the bright hawks of my life.

Still, friends, consider stone, that is without

the fret of gravity, and water that is without

anxiety.

And the pine trees that never forget their

recipe for renewal.

And the female wood duck who is looking this way

and that way for her children.  And the snapping

turtle who is looking this way and that way also.

This is the world.

And consider, always, every day, the determination 

of the grass to grow despite the unending obstacles.

this is a few blocks from my house, and I see it often when out walking. 

24 days left in my 30's, and...

 ...I was today years old when I learned how much sugar is too much in one sitting.

I used to wonder why people described some desserts as "too rich to eat more than a few bites." Well, today, age 39, 11 months, and 6 days, I officially reached the age where I understand.

Because I have eaten so much sugar in one sitting tonight, I cannot focus on poetry. 🤣

But also because I'm sure you're wondering what on earth I can have eaten: it was a skillet butterscotch blondie. The recipe was for two (enormous) pieces.......I may have eaten more than one but less than the whole thing, and I now believe that honestly it's probably four servings, not two despite what the title of the recipe said. And for the past three hours I've been feeling alternately a little gross and super tired like a child crashing half an hour after the crazy birthday party.

So apparently my forties will be the decade in which I moderate my dessert eating to something more reasonable....or at least spread it out over more meals during the day instead of scarfing it all down at nighttime! 

I'll be back tomorrow with poetry and reasonable lessons that I really should have learned earlier in my life. LOL.

on the 25th-to-last day of my 30s....

 ...I walked 8 miles with a friend, delivering the print version of the Sunday service to those without internet, soaking up the sun even in the cold wind, and getting some exercise in too.

My 30s are when I learned that I really need exercise more than I thought I did. there was a brief period in my 20s when I had a gym membership and a personal trainer, but honestly I just didn't last long (a year maybe?). It was only later when I realised the difference that exercise makes to my mental health. And also when I re-learned to love running. I ran a bit in college but of course I had the Chicago lakefront to run along, so who wouldn't enjoy that? Living in suburbia, running was a different story. I mostly ran in the neighbourhood, and rarely longer than a few miles, and I used to say that I loved "having run" far more than I loved "running." I liked the feeling I had afterward, but the during it was....a bit of a slog.

When I was about to turn 35 my friend Julia decided to come visit and run a half marathon while she was there, and I decided I could probably do that...more to prove to myself that my body *could* do it than anything else. It turned out to be amazing -- the training was great for getting into a routine, and the race itself was gorgeous, and I was hooked. I ran another race in Edinburgh the following year, and then when I was injured I missed it more than I thought possible. Now I'm only running short distances again, and more sporadically than I would like, but my exercise routine is still daily in a way it never was before...and if I miss a day, I notice it. I can feel how important it is to my brain as well as my body. 

I never in a million years thought I'd be the girl who needs to work out every day, but there you have it...I'm a healthier person for it. :-) though I am the SLOWEST runner ever, I actually do love it...though in many ways I think I would still say what I like most is Having Run, because I really do it for the mood-boosting/mind-clearing effect more than anything else.

I thought I'd look for a poem by a runner and the first half 100% sums up the experience I have, hahaha. (the second half in many ways captures the experience of getting older, actually, though she does so from her lens as a mother).

Here is the first half of Rachel Zucker's poem "wish you were here you are":

time isn’t the same for everyone there is

science behind this when you fly into space

you’re not experiencing time at the same rate

as someone tethered to Earth & someone

moving quickly experiences time at a slower rate

even on Earth so as I run through Central Park

at a speed not much faster than walking but slightly

I am shattering fields of time around me

& experiencing time differently from those I pass

I can attest to the fact that 'someone moving quickly experiences time at a slower rate' because honestly sometimes that is exactly what running feels like....especially on the way home when the weather is less than ideal!

maybe next year again...

26 days of my 30s

Today my usual morning workout was disrupted because the website for the current class I'm doing was down. That meant that instead of whatever was on the calendar for today, I did a quick from-memory run through of a previous workout instead.

As I was doing it, I was thinking about how much effort I put in over the past decade to disentangle exercise from food. I definitely used to think of exercise as a way to "earn" some sort of right to eat what I wanted. And that, my friends, is not healthy. All those programmes that involve earning more calories through exercise so that you can eat more....that's a terrible mental/emotional relationship with both exercise and food.

Learning that exercise is a good and desirable thing in itself, and that how I choose to eat is separate from that (though still needs care along with enjoyment!), is, if I'm 100% honest, still a work in progress. But I have come such a long way that I have hope that maybe by the time I turn forty in 26 days, I'll have it all worked out. 😂

Today's poem has literally nothing whatsoever to do with this, but I enjoyed it nonetheless. It's about that turn of the season toward 40...and though I have no intention of dying my hair (too lazy), I do intend to live on in a blaze of glory, LOL. 

This is "Pushing Forty" by Scottish author Alison Fell...whose birthday must also be in the autumn, as she perfectly captures the way things are at this time of year and this time of life.

Just before winter

we see the trees show

their true colours:

the mad yellow of chestnuts

two maples like blood sisters

the orange beech

braver than lipstick

Pushing forty, we vow

that when the time comes

rather than wither

ladylike and white

we will henna our hair

like Colette, we too

will be gold and red

and go out

in a last wild blaze

not my dinner today, but so delicious I am happy just remembering it from a few weeks ago! I'm so happy I learned to make my own pizza.

on the 27th day before my birthday....

 I was reminded that it's okay to go to sleep sometimes, and wake up and try again tomorrow.

I do not have the seemingly boundless energy people used to think I had (whether I ever had it is a secret I plan to keep!), and it is okay to rest.

Convincing myself that I won't miss anything, that there is no secret rule of the universe saying I have to stay awake until a certain time or risk being "uncool," or whatever other nonsense has kept me from my bed for years, took a long time.

Ok...truth be told, this might be a lesson I am still learning even in the last few days of my 30s. But today I am going to live into it.

This poem that my friend Elsa shared with me the other day feels like just the one I need today...because tonight, I need to be allowed to learn to love my need for rest, though it often feels like an uncertain new world to need more of that than I perhaps did before. And so it is. :-)

28 days until I'm not in my 30s anymore

28 days....4 weeks! So exciting. I love my birthday. Actually, let's be real: I love everyone's birthdays. I love the chance to celebrate. And the thought of turning over a new chapter and having new experiences...that's my jam. I'm all about all these things. #enneagram7 (though that's a learning for another day!)

Today I have been thinking about a lesson that was hard to learn. When I was growing up, I was often told I could do and be anything I wanted. Of course it was the 1980s and we all knew that wasn't true right then, it was more aspirational. Like...obviously my mom would say I *could* grow up to be president, but that's not entirely true, is it? Not because I'd be a terrible president, but because that's not a thing women can do just yet. Between social, political, and economic realities, the statement "you can do anything" is the kind of thing that we hope will become true the more we say it.

Anyway, I am mildly embarrassed to admit how old I was when I realised that one of the things that was causing me some level of unhappiness was that somehow I had internalised the idea that I could, or should, be able to do everything all at once. I'm not sure how people who have spouses and kids manage this, because even as a single person it was a shock to realise that I was going to have to live with a sort of cycle of things I wanted, rather than being able to do literally everything all at once. Clearly, you can't simultaneously work a dream job and travel the world and hang with friends and write a book and climb the ladder of denominational or community leadership, etc etc etc. It's more a rhythm of things weaving in and out than it is an all-or-nothing life experience.

I'm not sure why it took me a long time to figure this out, but it kinda did. I'm glad I learned it though, because I'm so much happier now than I was before I realised why I was feeling so frustrated all the time. :-)

The poem I've been pondering today isn't exactly related to this lesson. Or maybe it is. Anyway...it's by Joy Harjo, the poet laureate of the USA. She is a native woman from the Muscoge (Creek) tribe, and I first heard her during this year's Edinburgh International Book Festival, and I've been exploring some of her work. Today's is a poem called "A Map to the Next World" and it ends with these lines:

We were never perfect.

Yet, the journey we make together is perfect on this earth who was

once a star and made the same mistakes as humans.

We might make them again, she said.

Crucial to finding the way is this: there is no beginning or end.

You must make your own map.

That feels a little like what I think I've learned. 

on the 29th-to-last day of my 30s....

 ...I am once again thinking about how little we know about each other.

Over the past few years I have conducted a lot of funerals. And after at least half of those meetings with families, I have marvelled at how much people don't know about their loved ones. I'm something of a broken record about asking my friends to write down things about their lives, or to talk to their kids about their pre-parenting experiences. Because so much of what we know about our parents is really centred around ourselves rather than being about them, and too often the person's identity and personality ends up feeling pretty one-dimensional when we try to talk about them. 

What sort of things did they enjoy as a child? How did they get into (or out of!) trouble? What skills did they pick up or abandon? How did they meet the person they married? What did that relationship look like before children? What hobbies have endured, or were only for a season? What accomplishments have been forgotten along the way? What adventures did they take, meals did they love, places did they visit? How did they meet friends, and what kept those enduring friendships alive over the decades? How did they feel about things that happened in the world? Where were they at pivotal moments in history? What were the pivotal moments in their own lives (sometimes these are much smaller than a marriage or kids!)? And once children are grown and out of the house, what sorts of things filled their days? What did they enjoy doing for themselves, or for their community, not just for their kids? What kinds of things did they think about, pray about, wonder about that didn't have anything to do with their kids or homemaking or job?

So I suppose the lesson from this end of the decade is that it's important to share our lives with each other. Every time I make a "wine and the word" video I begin by sharing high and low points of the day, and I say something about how important it is that we share even these mundane things, because they are what make up a life. Living this life together in community, deepening our relationships through regular sharing of ourselves, matters. This is what it means to be community, to be in relationship: to know each other beyond just the small talk, and beyond just the most visible aspect of our days.

In what is probably not a coincidence, this is the poem I flipped to this morning as I was revisiting Nadine Aisha Jassat's debut collection "Let Me Tell You This":

Mother

He told me not to heed the Old Wives' Tales,

superstition and elaboration

bound in proverb and fable.

At home, by the kitchen table,

I watched my mother's hands spin the yarn

of meals and housework,

of duty and obligation.

I long to hear the tales in you.

To know that self beyond dinner time and bedtime,

to know the time of the tick of your heart,

which echoes in mine.

I wish I could press my ear to you like a shell,

to hear the ocean of you,

to know the roar that is yours.

What if it gets washed away too quickly?

And I live my life without your tales -- 

Searching, in the empty space by the kitchen table,

in the silence, for the words which were my mother.

the last 30 days of my 30s

 Soon, I will turn 40.

I had plans for this year -- 2020 plans. 20 places to visit, and 20 books to read, during the year I turn 40.

Alas, the year has not gone according to plan and I only managed to visit 2 of those places, and read a few of those books, before we were no longer allowed to travel and the library was closed.

Today it is 30 days until I turn 40. During these last 30 days of my 30s, I thought I'd try a new plan. One that doesn't require going anywhere, or getting anything complicated, just in case the pandemic makes that all impossible again.

During these last 30 days of my 30s, I'll be reading poetry and also pondering something I have learned in this decade. Though it's unlikely I'll be able to point to exact moments of my 30s when I learned things, so it's more of a reflection on things I am glad to know heading into the next decade, as it were.

Today I have been reading Baggage, by Jackie Kay (Scotland's Makar). I love these lines near the end, especially as I think about the close of one decade and the start of a next: 

Carrying your past on your back, late morning,

Like an animal carries what it needs to its den.

The old loch at your side, lapping: Ye ken

This – it is not as heavy it might be.

Sometimes the past does feel heavier than I can bear. Other times....not as heavy as it might be. I think that is because of something that I found very difficult to learn, and took me longer than perhaps it ought to have done. A piece of baggage I had carried and was, at times, crushing me. I was 32 when someone told me I did not need to carry it, but it has taken be a little while to internalise that. If I'm totally honest, I'm still working on it.

I have written/spoken elsewhere about the time when I was 13 that my mother looked me in the eye and said "we don't quit," and how that stuck with me as part of my identity. That phrase haunted me through times when I was in the midst of things that were really unhealthy but I was so certain that "we don't quit" meant I had to stick them out even if it was hurtful. Obviously there would be a million exceptions that any normal person (including my mother!) would have made, including the ones I was in! But ultimately, learning that it is okay to let go of things sometimes may have been one of the hardest lessons of my 30s. 

To be clear, I still think it's important to follow through on commitments. I am just also better at realising that not every single commitment is good, is forever, or requires my particular gifts. It is okay to let things go sometimes. 

And so..... "It is not as heavy as it might be."