I’m not sure if I should talk about this…

I’m not sure if I should talk about this. I don’t want anyone to feel bad, because I truly wouldn’t trade a thing.

But it’s hard.

Middle age.

Being in the middle of your adult kids and your aging loved ones. Trying to rejoice, and help, and encourage, while all the while watching your own body remind you that this life is short.

Very short.

You want to make the most of it all. You want to rejoice with those who are rejoicing and mourn with those who are mourning, and sometimes all those emotions happen in the same day, while you are just there trying to hold yourself together in the middle.

You get tired. You feel like you give, and give, and often you forget what it feels like to just rest.

Yes, being in the middle is hard. You miss those days your adult children sometimes complain about, when your babies were home, and you dread the days where you know your body will start to fail you as you watch beloved family age and die.

Everyone said life goes so fast, and it does. But where’s the book on “What to expect in these middle age years”?

You aren’t done.
But you aren’t at the beginning either.

You’ve got blessings you can count, but you’ve got regrets and sad things too.

Oh, and if you think about only those, you might get down and stay down.

But then you remember, Jesus.

Jesus

He made these middle years.

He knew you’d live them. He knew you’d feel them. He knew you’d struggle to wipe your tears from one situation so you could rejoice with someone else you love the next.

God knew you’d stretch yourself thin to serve at both ends, and you’d find yourself praying for the strength to keep going.

But He also knew, you wouldn’t trade it for the world.

You really wouldn’t.

For it’s in the serving, it’s in the loving others more than you love yourself, and loving Jesus that you find the living.

The real living.

Yes, you learned a long time ago, life is fleeting. This world and all the success and material things, they can’t satisfy.

Not
at
all.

But the love of Jesus.
Well, that doesn’t change.
Because He doesn’t change.
And He is the rock in the midst of it all.

That Rock was there when you rocked your babies in the middle of the night, when you pray over your grandbabies, and He is there as you hold your Daddy’s hand as he takes his last breath.

Here.
In the middle.
You see it all.

You see where you’ve been and where you’re headed.

No, it isn’t always easy.

But sometimes it’s been amazing. And you know one day, one glorious day, every tear will be wiped away, and wrong will be made right, and death won’t have any more sting.

And for now,
here in the middle,
you keep going.

Because you know, you know if you are His, you know Who holds you year after year, Who holds all those you love, season after season, from your first breath until your last… and for all eternity.

It’s not you.
It’s Him.

And when we are weak,
Here in the middle,
He’s strong.

And that’s more than enough.
Here in the middle.

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And that’s me and my granddaughter in the pic. God sure does give us some joy days here in the middle. ❤️