Okay, granted, I am not yet there. In fact, I’ve got a little over seven months to go. But it stands to reason that since I am turning 40 just after the turn of 2020 that quite a few of my friends are turning 40 either this year or next. And so they are.
Allyson turned 40 in May. When I called her to wish her a happy birthday and teasingly ask her how it feels to be 40, even she didn’t respond with her usual maxim: Age is mind over matter – if you don’t mind, it doesn’t matter. Instead, she made me swear we would be friends even when we were old, completely grey-haired and grandmothers. I swore we would…and realized that 40 was bothering even Allyson – if only a little.
Today another friend turned 40. I met Susan Stevens (née Kirkhart) our very first Sunday after moving back to New Hampshire almost exactly 20 years ago. My dad had “met” her dad on the phone via a homeschool connection as we headed up there in order to get a feel of churches, homeschool groups, areas to avoid, etc. So, we visited their church on Sunday and as our dads talked, Susan introduced herself and invited Katey and I to a Bible study she was having at her house the following evening for girls our age. I honestly had no intention of going. We had just moved, were stuck in a hotel as we hadn’t found a place to live and I had little interest in meeting new people. But Susan followed up her invitation with an e-mail to my dad Monday morning, reiterating the invite. My dad gave us little choice and off to the Kirkhart’s we went. It was Providence.
For the next four years, we girls would meet first every Monday and then every other for Bible study. We would prop each other up, talk through difficult challenges, pray together, study God’s Word together during some of the most forming years of anyone’s life. I met Allyson at that Bible study. I learned what it truly means to be “ready always to give an answer for the hope that lies within you” in that Bible study. And if half of us hadn’t gotten married or moved onto good jobs in 2003, we’d probably still be meeting today. Most of us would agree we have never been in a Bible study quite that amazing ever again.
Susan was one of the girls who got married in 2003. She moved so her husband could go to seminary. Then I would move. We saw each other a few times, perhaps, and stayed in touch through random cards and e-mails. I last saw her in 2011 when she was pregnant with the first of her two boys. Communication since then has been even more random, but she will always hold a special place in my heart. And if we were to meet up again for coffee, we would pick up right where we left off eight years ago.
Writing her a birthday card, I grew reminiscent, jotting down old memories that are now – literally – nearly half a lifetime ago. And that’s when it hit me again, just as it had when Allyson turned 40 and just as it does whenever I think of how close 40 is. It’s not so much the age. Or even that I’m halfway “up the hill” (or even more). The awe of 40 lies in the fact that I’m not really sure how I got here. Wasn’t I 23 just yesterday? Or if not that young, at least 30? It seems like yesterday I was back in New Hampshire, meeting Susan at a coffee shop to discuss who-knows-what. Or watching Allyson’s little Caleb toddle around, Violet crawling after him. Or suffering through summers in Texas, lovely trips to New Hampshire or wherever because I hadn’t care in the world, watching it snow outside my office window in Minnesota. It seems like my life has passed like a dream. Twenty, thirty and now forty!?!?! I never imagined I’d be this old. Never.
But, in the light of eternity, what is 40? One day I will live in Heaven where a 1,000 years will pass by like a day. Which is very hard to imagine. But also a wonderful thought.
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