Still Thankful After All These Years

I will turn 50 this year. I am pretty excited about it. I never dreamed I would live to be this old. I am thankful to be growing old with the love of my life. When we were first married we used to talk a lot about growing old together. We would tease that the romance wouldn't die as long as someone would push our wheelchairs close together enough that we could touch pinkies! Well we are still a ways out from the wheelchairs, or at least my beloved is. I may be there any day now. Anyway, we aren't in the nursing home yet, but we are aging. Even though we still have little children, there is no doubt that the person who looks back at me from the mirror is getting old. Not just older...old.

Sir Dashing, in spite of the eternally collegiate way that he has about him, has silver hair. Though he still can do much more than I can in terms of work and being the Knight in shining armor, he too is slowing down. Here's the deal. I am so thankful that he is not coloring his hair or having things nipped and tucked. I like that he doesn't mind being grandfatherly. I love that he didn't have a midlife crisis, never bought a sports car or had hair implants or was attracted to a younger woman. Now that we have both passed midlife (our children remind us that there aren't many 100 year old folks around), I am so very grateful that Sir Dashing doesn't mind me getting old. I am not aging gracefully. I have been around some tough corners and each one has etched it's mark on my life. Thank God my husband is okay with that and can still appreciate me.

I can have the grayest of gray hair, I can have deep and numerous laugh lines, I can sag, I can limp, I can require expensive medical care and my beloved still looks at me with that look that tells me he's blind! He still likes me! What a blessing. He either doesn't see that old woman that I visit with in the mirror or for some reason, he just likes that old gal. Either way, I am freer than I have ever been to be the person the Lord designed me to be. I don't have to pretend, or to try to stuff myself in another person's mold. I am very thankful for that. I am so very thankful.

Sir Dashing and I have had our bumps in the road. Both of us have been difficult to love at times, but we have always had a deep relationship that was never based on a clothing size or the color of hair. Though we were once young and beautiful (if only to each other) somehow, we never hung our love there. It was always tossed like an ever widening lariat loop, encompassing whatever the other person was or became. Now the loop encircles aging. Some day it will be frailty, perhaps one of our memories will fail and at some point one of us  will continue without the other. I am so thankful that all of these options are still within the boundaries of a romantic and epic love affair. We are writing it as we go along and to me it is a precious thing.

Sir Dashing,  you are my knight, my hero and my friend. Keep that pinky reserved for me. Oh yeah, thanks for the M&M's!

Mommy 1