This week I turn forty. Peter Pan has grown up and discovered himself surrounded by pirates with receding hairlines and expanding paunches. When I listen to popular music it’s only in hopes of being hip and not because I really like the music. I now spend a lot of time shopping for comfortable shoes. And I’m having a hard time staying awake after dinner.  I am going gentle into that good night. Dangit.

When I turned thirty, I made a list of all the things that I hoped to achieve by age forty. Thankfully, I lost the list. And now I can’t remember most of my ambitious goals. I did say that I’d like to have translated at least one Bible by now. But I’ve only managed to get bogged down somewhere in the middle of the New Testament. And I was definitely going to write a novel before I turned forty. Instead, I’ve written 4,217 emails since 2004 and 653 blog posts since 2005.

Hilary makes fun of me because I do things and then write them on my to-do list so I can check them off. Looking back at the last decade there are some things that I accomplished by the grace of God and so I’ll put them on the list and check them off:

1. I’m still married. Thank you, Hilary.
2. I didn’t crack up on the mission field. Not everyone would agree.
3. I got to eat breakfast with my children almost every day for the last ten years. Thanks, kids.
4. Despite myself, I have yet to backslide/turn apostate (Not everyone agrees on this one, either). Thank you, God.
5. I have no car payments, house mortgage or credit card debt. And no equity either. Thank you, St. Francis and Wycliffe Bible Translators.

Until about age 35, middle-aged women were always telling me, “You remind me of my son.” It has been disturbing to notice that this doesn’t happen anymore. In fact, I now find that good-looking girls in their twenties remind me of my daughter. And I’ve also discovered that they don’t appreciate being called “girls.”

When my Mom turned sixty, she bravely proclaimed, “Sixty is the new forty!” If that’s true what is forty? Like most of those in my generation, I am getting older but I refuse to grow up. What do I do now? Should I coast to fifty or try to recapture the excitement of my youth? I think I had my mid-life crisis a couple of years ago so I need to make other plans. Well, I’d write more but it’s getting late and I need my sleep.