Are you feeling worn out and weary in your middle age? Frustrated with the monotony of your quotidian rhythms? Longing for something more exciting than laundry, dishes and teen chauffeuring?
I’m with you friend. The daily “making of the donuts” can weigh us down when we’re grinding through mid-life. There’s a tension between the youth culture our society worships and the whisper of retirement. A gratitude for our own youth experienced while a frustration with the new weight around our middles. A sorrow for the body that once leapt with ease that now languishes when deprived of extra sleep. The longing for less responsibility to make margin for our own needs, but gratitude for a full life sandwiched between the younger and older ones in our lives. A discontent with less time to rewrite our stories, while grateful for more still.
While we might not be on stages or podiums, we are the ones building the podiums and making magic happen behind the scenes. We shape the lives of our littles, guiding them each day to make safe and wise choices that will help them lead lives closer to Christ. Lives that will help them lead the way forward when their middles are squishier like ours.
And Christ sees us. He sees the dirty dishes we dug out of our choking sinks, the diapers changed, the dinners made. He sees the hoops jumped through to watch games, the sleep lost to make costumes, the hours spent on selfless sacrifices.
And He agrees. He agrees with our sacrifices since they’re ones He would make Himself. He would do the servant’s jobs that no one sees or wants. He washed His friends’ filthy feet. And He took it to the next level as He starved in the desert, was arrested, beaten, burdened with the weighty walk of the cross, and allowed His flesh to be pierced with fatal nails.
Our daily woes pale in comparison to His incomparable sacrifices. They illuminate the importance of the humble middle-aged mama work we slug through each day. As you clean yet another teen-or-toddler-made mess, think on Christ’s humble cleansing of his friend’s feet on the night He knew His earthly body would be broken soon. As you lament another meal to make, consider Christ’s ravenous days in the desert. As you feel trapped in a body declining daily, lean on the gratitude that it can breathe unlike Christ as He languished on the cross.
So, my middle-aged warriors, although our stories on earth are half-way written, there’s so much more good to be reaped. Let’s infuse gratitude into each day for our gifts still retained and yet to gain. And let’s strive to see our lives though Christ’s lens, not a worldly one that would have us rewind. A lens that lifts up servants who sacrifice for one another.
He sees.
He approves.
He applauds you in following His servant heart’s lead.
