I’m 40

I hope that means that I’m about halfway through my life, as opposed to two-thirds.  That feels like a reasonable guess as to the difference between keeping healthy habits and allowing myself to regress.

Occasionally I think about things like how old my dad was when things in his life happened.  Mom’s been gone for ten years; at 40, Dad’s mom had been gone for 21.  I’m two years older than Dad was when he and my mother divorced.  However, the ages of my children, and the length of my marriage, are essentially identical.  I’m about the same age now that he was when he decided “what he was going to be when (he) grew up.”  I’m about to start my 19th year in the same occupation, and I still love going to work in the morning.

We’ve done things differently, he and I.  He’s less risk-averse than I am, for one (big) thing.  That’s meant less stability, but greater rewards, in his professional life.  Sometimes I’ve wondered whether, and to what degree, he’s looked disapprovingly on the somewhat safer paths I’ve chosen.  But you know what?  He told me not long ago over a whiskey that he was proud of me for being such a conscientious father, and that he sometimes considered whether he’d been there enough for us.

I was moved and humbled by that, because he was and is a great dad.  I also related to it, because I think I can look mostly objectively on how I do things as a father and feel pretty good, but it’s not a long walk to a scary neighborhood where I’m riddled with guilt at things I remember not doing so well.  (You know, guilt gets a bad rap.  I don’t think it should consume, but why can’t it motivate?)

So when I take inventory, on the negative side:  I’m sitting here managing that guilt, working on not being a fat guy anymore, and trying to get a bit more of a leg up on some things I need to finish around the house.  On the positive side:  I have a strong marriage, healthy children, good friends, a job I enjoy, a warm church home, a father who is still making me a better person, and the objective knowledge that my “negative side” list is full of mere details.

In short, most of the time I have peace, and I am deeply thankful for it.  I know too many who are tormented by its absence.

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