To Everything There is a Season

Living my best life

I am not going to write about current events or something yucky. Hub and I are at our Florida home and it is wonderful. We bought a new place in an over 55 community. I am having a hard time wrapping my head around the fact that I am legally able to live here. There is a certain “ugh” factor to this, but there is also a sigh. Not one of relief exactly. I do not know just how to describe how I am feeling after that sigh. Celebrating Christmas down here is a joy. Hanging Christmas lights in shorts is awesome and spending Christmas day on the beach with mimosas is amazing.

But, being in the Florida sunshine, I am forced to contemplate the seasons of my life. It says in Ecclesiastes that there is a season for everything. When you are young, you really don’t think about this. It was all about goals, getting our kids raised, our house built and making it to the next step.

We were living in the back of our tapestry of our life. If you have ever seen the back of a tapestry, it looks like it is a mess. Threads of all colors going every which direction with no rhyme or reason (or so it feels like).

But now…we are slowing down. Our seasons are changing and it is happening to both of us. We have the great privilege and honor of being in the process of turning our tapestry over and seeing the other side. I am not saying that it it even close to being finished. But we are seeing the end results of our life’s work.

I know that I am not at a standstill in life, I am growing and learning every day. About who I am. About who I want to become. About who I used to be. It is an internal journey that can only happen to me. I am still moving, but now it is with an eye on the past and what I have accomplished and an eye on my future legacy. We are ready to slow down and enjoy all we have worked so hard for. Living in Florida, I am forced to confront aging every day. In Idaho, I do not think about it. Florida is retirement on a grand scale. Everyone is old. No, we are not retired yet, but because of the work Hub does, we feel semi-retired, being able to spend months at a time here between his work schedule.

I am deciding what kind of person I want to be as I age. I see all kinds of old here. There is the active old, who look like they belong on a golf course or beach and are accomplished hands at the active living of retirement. Then you have the opposite end of the spectrum, those who are in wheelchairs or using walkers and doing all they can just to make it one more day. I am always curious about people’s age. I got hit in the face with my age when I saw this old fart walking down the street and I could hear the music he was listening to and it wasn’t Lawrence Welk. It was Styx. Pinch me! Is that hot senior guy from high school now a big bellied senior citizen walking his Pomeranian? Yeah, maybe do more than pinch me. Slap me. (Insert crying emoji here)

So, as I travel this road of getting older, I can begin to pick and choose who I want to be and what I don’t want to become. It is freeing in a way. It is a season of my life where we are unencumbered by the responsibilities of young parenthood and free of the ailments and complaints of the truly old. We are each other’s priorities once again as it was when we were first married. Only we are past the goalposts set as young marrieds. We are free once again to just be us. Permission granted to live a life created by us. Defined by us. Blessed beyond measure.