First Half Century

On Sunday I will complete the first half century of my life.  Doesn't it sound cool?  A half century. Jan likes to say "half a hundred," and I like the alliteration of it, but half a century just sounds so solid.  I'm very excited.  It's the start of a new half century, a new decade, a new year.  50.  I don't know why I'm so excited, but I am.  I bumped into a former parishioner at the grocery store today who said she'd been weighing whether to send me a card that included the number 50.
"Of course," I said, laughing.  "I think it's cool."

My adult life has seemed to be organized in decades, and each time I enter a new one, I wonder, "What life changing thing will happen in the next ten years.?"

The 20s were my theatre years.  I finished college, interned at the Berkshire Theatre Festival and Actors' Theatre of Louisville, taught a year of high school drama, spent five summers at Interlochen, and moved to Virginia to work at Virginia Stage Company for twelve year, with summer stints in PA and RI.  I attended church, mostly as a stealth parishioner, traveled some during spells of in-between-employment, and suffered through a variety of temp jobs and substitute teaching.  I bought a house toward the end of that decade and started to grow restless.

The year I turned 30, I went to the Holy Land on a pilgrimage with my church and began exploring a call to ordination.  The rest of that decade was spent discerning my call, jumping through hoops, three years of seminary, ordination as deacon and then priest, and my first year of ministry.  When I told people in the theatre that I was going to seminary, many laughed, thinking I was pulling their leg.  "I'm serious," I would tell them.  They couldn't imagine such a dramatic shift, so many of them refugees from the religion that had hurt them or cast them out.  Everything had to change, and it did, and yet, it seemed to be the fulfillment of the longing I had felt all my life to serve God.  The first time I celebrated the Eucharist, I thought this is what I was born for.

Turning 40 was the first time a birthday was hard for me.  It signaled that I most likely wouldn't be having any biological children.  Not impossible, but not likely.  I had a lot of grieving to do for a life that I had imagined.  Even when we choose the road less traveled and it makes all the difference, and we're leading a good life, there is still grief for other roads not taken, and it's important to feel the loss so that it can move on through.  This has been a decade of inner work as well as outer work. Much healing has happened, as I've experienced my first 10 years of ordained life: Hickory Neck Church and CNU campus ministry, SpiritWorks and Bruton Parish.  Jan.  I realized in a conversation with my spiritual director that the pool of sadness which lurked deep inside me is no longer there - or no longer as large.  How grateful I am.

Sunday I begin the 50s.  I've decided that 50 will be fun.  I don't have big plans for my birthday.  It falls on a Sunday, so I will be in church - no place I'd rather be than doing what I was born to do.  Planning a nice lunch and maybe a little kayaking and a nap.  We'll see.  My retreat was a present to myself.  I think I'm going to start tap class on Wednesday.  And maybe Jan and I will go to Greece with our little bear in the coming year.  Hopefully I'll finish my book.  Perhaps I'll even get something published.
Who knows what's next?  Here am I, God.  Your servant is listening.

One of my favorite lines from Sunday in the Park with George, "A blank page or canvas. His favorite.  So many possibilities."

The next half century:  So many possibilities...