I’m turning sixty in a few months. I can’t believe it. Time sped by, and I wonder if it’s going to keep speeding like this. It didn’t feel like that in the process, but in retrospect it most certainly does. 

I spent a lot of my twenties convinced I had life figured out.

Bless that girl.

She knew exactly how things would go. I'd raise my kids, work hard, keep the house clean, somehow have endless energy, and one day everything would magically get easier. Turns out, life had other plans.

First, nobody tells you that your body starts negotiating with you. At twenty, you skip sleep, eat a cheeseburger at midnight, and wake up looking refreshed. You also can go out drinking and dancing with your friends until 3 a.m. and teach an aerobics class at 6 a.m. 

At fifty-nine, you sleep wrong and need a heating pad, two stretches you found on YouTube, a few strong prayers, and a moment of silence before you can turn your head. Don’t get me wrong, I am blessed to be here, and I don’t complain about it. Okay, sometimes, I complain about the aches, but overall, I feel great, and that’s what matters.  I also thought confidence came with age. I imagined there'd be some official ceremony where someone handed me a sash that read Congratulations. You now know exactly what you're doing.

That never happened. What did happen surprised me. I quit worrying so much about whether everyone liked me. I realized no is a complete sentence. I learned that protecting my peace isn't selfish. It's necessary, and I do it very well. 

My younger self would have apologized for things that weren't even her fault. My older self wonders why she wasted the energy.

The funny thing about getting older is that you slowly stop trying to impress people you've known for five minutes and start appreciating the ones who've loved you for forty years.

Friendships change, too. When I was younger, I thought having lots of friends mattered. Now I know having a handful of people who show up when life gets messy is worth more than a hundred acquaintances who only remember your birthday because Facebook reminded them. But friends, while of course, are still important, they aren’t it. It for me is my husband and my children. 

If you've raised children, you spend years wishing they'd quit making messes, quit arguing, quit needing rides everywhere, and maybe learn that the hamper isn't just decorative. Then one day they move out and the house gets scary quiet. You don't expect to miss the noise, but you do. Okay, I’ll be honest, I miss SOME of the noise, but I do very much appreciate the quiet often as well. 

Our family all gathered over the Fourth of July, and for a few days the house felt full again. There was laughter coming from different rooms, conversations happening over each other, dogs (and a tiny cat) underfoot, and enough food to feed a small army. I ate a lot of it, too. That’s a different blog post though.

My oldest daughter is expecting our first grandchild and seeing her rounding in the middle and watching her prepare for motherhood snuck up on me. I still picture her as the little girl who wanted me to check under the bed for monsters. Now she's getting ready to become that little boy’s safe place. 

How did that happen? It doesn't seem possible that the little people who once needed help tying their shoes somehow grew into adults with careers, spouses, mortgages, and babies on the way. It happened so quickly. People spend years warning you about toddlers and teenagers., but nobody warns you that watching your children become adults might be your favorite stage of all. And the hardest because they don't need you in the same ways anymore. But they still call. They still ask questions. They still come home. Only now they're bringing other humans and stories I’m not an active part of instead of homework. That’s been an adjustment, knowing my people are living their lives without coming home to me. It’s weird. I think my father probably felt the same. 

One of the biggest surprises of getting older has been realizing I don't have to keep proving myself to anyone, but especially to me. I don't need the biggest house, the newest car, or anyone else's approval. I'm perfectly happy sitting on my screened porch with coffee, watching birds argue over the feeder while my dogs supervise the entire neighborhood from the yard.

I've become the person my twenty-year-old self probably would have called boring. But I know now she wasn’t right about a lot of things, and she's wrong about that, too. 

This version of life is pretty wonderful. I still have goals. I still want to grow. I still write books. I still drag myself to the gym before sunrise because apparently I enjoy paying money to voluntarily make my muscles hurt. Some mornings I even question that decision. But I keep showing up. Maybe that's another lesson age teaches you. Perfection isn't the goal anymore. Consistency is.

My twenty-year-old self chased what was next and a big picture goal that seemed more important than anything, though I can’t quite remember what it was. 

My fifty-nine-year-old self has learned to notice what's right in front of her. The family dinners. The phone calls. The quiet mornings. The dogs curled at my feet. The excitement of waiting to meet a little person who hasn't even arrived yet but has already changed our family forever. The husband who’s been through almost 30 years of it all, by my side, being my best friend and favorite person through it all. How amazing is that? 

If I could go back and tell that younger version of me one thing, it wouldn't be about avoiding mistakes. I'd tell her to stop rushing, and dear God, the house does not have to be immaculate all the time! The days she thinks will last forever won't. And the days she thinks she'll never survive, she will. She’ll always survive. Life has a funny way of working itself out, though usually not the way we planned, but almost always better than we imagined.

What would you tell your 20-year-old self?