Today's Lesson:  You will age.

This past weekend, April 12, I attended a ladies retreat.  I, along with 5, 000 other members of the female species, mostly over the age of 50, sat Friday night through Saturday mid-day in cinema style floppy chairs in front of great woman telling great stories of God's greatness.  Speakers included Lysa Terkeurst (https://lysaterkeurst.com), Rosaria Butterfield (https://rosariabutterfield.com), and 90's Christian girl band sensation, Point of Grace (pointofgrace.net).

I was inspired.
I was uplifted.
Mostly, I felt old.

Point of Grace members who were fashion and beauty icons in my early adulthood years ... are my age.  Lysa Terkeurst is my age.  Rosaria Butterfield is just a smidge older.  I fall into the category that those I rub shoulders with, much younger in age than myself, consider the "older women" of faith.  When did that happen?

When I was a young Mom, learning the ropes and feeling as if every one for which I grabbed was fraying at the ends, I would hear these sages who are now my age whisper promises that seemed like fairy tales:  "These days go by so fast".  Humph!, thought I, of little patience and lack of sleep.  These days linger and lag and leave me feeling weathered by storms of life lessons for which I was totally unprepared.

Then, time passed.

Along came baby number two, and despite a four year track record of embracing a job description called Mother, I still had lessons to learn.  Time still seemed to tick through mud-covered clocks that took too long to circle to the next hour.

Then, time passed.

Along came unexpected baby number three and life ... changed.  It had now been eight years since my role as Mother defined who I was and who I'd come to embrace.  It was a sweet time.  It was a sacred time - mostly.  Despite feedings in the wee hours of the night, changing of diapers that were endless, and demands made from three people in different stages of life, I embraced the changes.

However, embracing change and noticing the swift pace of time that proceeds are two different things.

I'm pretty sure that no one walking on the planet gets out alive.  Intellectually, I know that.  So why am I shocked to see grey hair, older adult daughters, and hands that now look like my Mothers belong to me?  Time has a quick pace.

Measure your life in seasons.  Seasons change, dear friend.  Singleness.  Early Motherhood.  Menopause.  Whatever your life season you find yourself in is simply just that - a season.  The next season waits eagerly at the timeline awaiting it's introduction.  We can deny, prolong, despise and dread an upcoming season but that won't change the inevitability of it's coming ... and passing.  Seasons come.  Seasons go.  Trying to prolong your time in one season for fear of jumping into the next season robs you.  Oh the ways robbery comes!

Just in case you were wondering, our lives are a mist, a vapor, grass.  Not my words but the words of a Spirit-inspired Psalmist.  But don't let your heart get troubled and for heavens sake, don't freak out! It may seem predictive to say, but the best is yet to come.  Those who love Jesus are promised a place that He has gone and already prepared for us.  This place will be our new home.  This will be place where seasons never pass and therefore never leaving us with a sense of longing for the good ol' days.  It's coming.  We don' have to understand.  We just have to believe.

Put some perspective into this season of your life.  It will pass.  A new season awaits.  In the end, each season has joys that await you, building character and wisdom for that season in which you will find yourself being part of the club I now belong ...  an "older woman" of faith.  I will wear the crown proudly.

Aging and adjusting my crown,
Christina