this is the week of all happy things

It’s Tuesday and this is the Week of All Happy Things in our house. Boy 2’s birthday rolls into my birthday which rolls into our wedding anniversary and every year I quiet myself to try to soak in all the love.

My whole heart cannot believe I will be thirty-nine this year. All I can say to all the twenty-five year-olds out there is this: I AM STILL YOUR PEOPLE.

{Except that the various tubes of eye cream in my bathroom, the lame playlists I make on Spotify, and the practical clothing in my closet prove that I’m totally not twenty-five.}

In all honesty, I am happy to be a decade away from my unstable twenties. I am equally ecstatic to be so close to the finish line of my thirties. It has taken me two decades of soul-life to make it through the past ten years.

My heart is singing a song and it goes like this: Bring on forty, baby.

The sweetness of my thirties has been hard-won as Mr. Fantastic and I have swum upstream against the strong currents called life-in-general. But between the mercy of Jesus and the patient endurance of my husband, our story is still a beautiful one of triumph.

Don’t believe the lie that letting go of youth is awful. Don’t think for one second that happiness ends when you shut down your wedding planning board on Pinterest. And if you swallow the ugliness that says your best days are behind you, you will taste that foul flavor until the day you finally vomit it back up.

Forget everything you learned from commercials and Hollywood about success being bound up in the opinions of others, external beauty, and the charm of youth. The more years we bravely stand in Christ, the mightier and more beautiful we become.

There are deceptions and experiences that are more difficult to silence and delete from our souls. We beat them into submission one day at a time, one scripture at a time, one daring moment of trusting God at time.

Roar into the dark. Fight the fire of insecurity and fear with a double-edged sword. The battle today is just one of many more to come before God carries us home. We are still becoming who He has made us to be.

Take it from me and Moses and Joseph and Elizabeth and Jesus Himself, God loves a late bloomer. It is a joy to walk the narrow, winding road of lessons learned later in life.

This will be a good week for the Week of All Happy Things. And even if it isn’t all it’s cracked up to be; should tragedy strike or the happy days pass quietly by because we are too busy to celebrate, I know a truth that rises above all else:

His love for His people has no beginning and no end. Love never gets old, it doesn’t wrinkle or fade or fail us. Not ever. Even when my body winds down to its last moment of precious life, my soul will go on with Him.

Love is forever.

Happy Week of all All Happy Things to us all. May the winding road of your own journey bring you squarely, and happily into God’s glorious presence.