Being a woman over 40

I remember sitting in class in the 5^th grade and hearing my Math teacher ask us to calculate how old we would be at the turn of the century.  Imagine my shock when I realized I was going to be 45 years old. YIKES!!! At 10 years old, just the thought of being 45 was enough to make me want to laugh and cry and gag and vomit all at the same time.  It sounded perfectly awful at the time.  The truth is it has proven to be awfully perfect.

I’m not only over 40, I am over 50 (53 to be precise). Being a woman over 40 has become more of a growth experience and a growing experience than any of my pre 40 years.  I have and continue to grow in ways I never would have imagined at 10 or 20 or 30 and almost none of it has to do with my clothing size … although that has grown as well. But I no longer care what people think about the clothes I choose to wear or the makeup that I choose not to wear.  I have stopped dieting in an effort to squeeze my body into a size 8.   My butt is happier in pants than it ever was in a mini-skirt and my feet are thrilled that they no longer have to be jammed into trendy sandals or stiletto heels.  I have traded in my contact lenses for my trusty old eyeglasses. 

The wrinkles at the outside of my eyes are visual reminders of all the laughter I have experienced in my life and the lines between my brows are not signs of old age many years of concentration and thought.

I have never dyed my hair and don’t intend to start now.  People tell me I don’t have a lot of gray hair and I would feel differently if I did.  But I know they’re there.  I see the white hairs on my head, and quite honestly, other parts of my body as well.  I’m just not ashamed of them and feel there is no reason to hide them. 

Oh, don’t misunderstand.  There are things about being over 40 that are, in a word, annoying.  Take for instance the aches and pains in my 50 year old knees; pains I never even considered in my 20s and 30s.  These, too, are reminders of my life well lived.  I may not be able to run the Boston or New York Marathons with these creaking knees, but I never wanted to run the Boston or New York Marathons when I was 20, so it’s all good.  

I can get down on my knees and thank God for the person He has allowed me to become: thank him for the gift of ME.  I no longer question God’s plan or wonder why things didn’t turn out the way I wanted them to or the way I thought they should.  Things have turned out exactly the way they were supposed to.  And now, as a woman over 40, I am finally really OK with it all.  If a genie were to pop out of a magic lamp today and ask me if I wanted to go back in time to a place where my butt was tighter and my waist smaller, I’d jam him back into that magic lamp and crazy glue the cover shut.  I am comfortable in my clothes these days but more importantly, I am comfortable in my skin.