I will sing, sing a new song
I will sing, sing a new song

By the time you read this, I will have be 40.

Yes, my long idyllic youth has ended and I have officially crossed the Rubicon of that mythical age that once meant over the hill or at least, no longer young. Though I’ve realized age is relative and forty doesn’t quite mean what it used to, please allow me, a man in his rapidly waning thirties, a bit of indulgence as I reflect on another decade biting the dust.

One thing I can say without qualification is that I have learned a lot: “Experience is the most brutal of teachers but you learn, my God, do you learn,” as C.S. Lewis once wrote, and I have learned much by doing it wrong. So very, very wrong.

Much of that learning has happened over the last decade, as I’ve been humbled beyond measure by life, by the sheer amount of effort and resilience it takes to navigate family life and career changes, to wake up and comfort a sick child and then go to work to put food on the table (and a roof over the table). The old axiom “life is hard” has settled deeply into my bones. The old grudges against adults and authority has waned, as I find myself both an adult and somewhat authoritative, albeit begrudgingly.

The past decade has also brought about the end of all those hallmarks of youth that our culture worships: the loss of any physical or mental sense of invulnerability, the arrival of aches and pains that don’t go away, the shattering of youthful idealism, the wholesale collapse of my “personal salvation project,” and the slow dissolution of those manic desires for eternal youth and cheap transcendence.

And, thanks be to God, so many of those youthful illusions were dissolved by family life, by the great love and great suffering of parenting, by the daily demands of the present, by the rapid fire arrival of my children and the swelling obligations of now.

Another continual lesson: the joy really is in the journey, and never quite out there or in some utopic future. The marrow of life really is in those quiet in between moments. The nice homecooked dinner on a Tuesday, the sparrow outside the office window, the random cocktail and conversation with a friend, the quiet moment with a child before the day begins, the hour or two my wife and I steal away together at the end of a long day, utterly exhausted on the couch, the final prayer before I fall asleep: these are the brushstrokes of full, simple, beautiful life, a canvas I will only see in its fullness on the other side of eternity.

As far as regrets, “I’ve got a few.” Outside of all the boring, vapid, and usual shortcomings I have, I’ve also overcorrected in the opposite way on occasion. I’ve spent too much time trying to get it right, putting untold pressure on myself, others, and on the external world to match some platonic ideal of perfection. And yet, life just happens, and keeps on happening, without anyone’s permission but God’s. And isn’t that glorious?

And that’s the sunrise of 40. The relief of it all. The great letting go of what you thought you should be and how you thought life should unfold. Here, finally, at the end of youth, a real newness becomes possible.

I’ve also learned, as I watch my children grow and change, that time is a thief, but before it takes, it gives, my God, does it give. Generously and prodigally, and without qualification or worthiness, it gives you more than you can hold. My heart is full of an aching gratitude for my children, for the gift of being a parent and husband. I want to be with my family most of all. I want to be with them and I want to be who I am when I am with them, who they have taught me to be. They are the most interesting people I know.

It’s quite wonderful to sort of lose yourself to find yourself again. The childhood innocence slowly starts to return, albeit a little wiser, a bit more seasoned. The wanderlust begins to fade, and above all, a yearning for home starts to emerge. Home, in both the existential longing we all experience for that place of ultimate belonging, peace, and bliss, and also home in the sense of my little home with my little family, with all the messiness and chaos that married life and three little children leave in their wake.

I am grateful to realize, here on the edge of 40, I am learning to want what I’ve already got. I have been wholly swallowed up in the love of my family, and my love for them. When I was young, I dreamed of far away locales and creative cocoons where I could write or create some special work of art or poetry. Now, the only cocoon I need is their arms around me, the only far away locale is the one we create together, the only prose or poetry I want to produce places them as the protagonists and muses.

Finally, I’ve learned that family life, when it is filled with love (and sometimes wild wild chaos, mistakes and missteps, apologies and reconciliations), is a deep well to draw from, an endless stream of new awakenings and wonderings, of reframings and rememberings of what it was like to be little in a world of big people with big ideas.

Here’s to little people with little ideas. Here’s to the blessed ordinary life. Here’s to my wife, my children, my parents, my siblings, my lifelong friends, and my co-laborers at work and play. Here’s to time, forty full years of it, and all it gives and takes.

And here’s to God, the Giver of all good gifts, my Home beyond all homes, the Beginning, Middle, and End of all my aching gratitude.