It's time I act my age...

You aren't going to wear that, are you? My twenty-one year old daughter asks as we head out the door for Gavin's Christmas program at school and I slip a thin red satin ribbon necklace over my head. Dangling from the ribbon is a reindeer fashioned with tiny clothespins, red  pipe-cleaners for antlers and a small gold bell around the reindeer's neck.

It makes you look like a grandmother! Emily protests, and I look at her with raised eyebrows and reluctantly remove the reindeer necklace. I don't want to embarrass my daughter, but the truth is, I am a grandmother, and honestly - what's wrong with looking like one?

Two months after my 40th birthday, I look in the mirror one morning and I don't know what it is, but something about the way I look is different and instinctively I know I'm pregnant.

We're relatively new to this rural community and I don't have a doctor yet, and when I make an appointment to meet this new-to-me doctor, my only hope is that he's older. I've been graying since my 20's, but I refuse to be pregnant at 40 and meet a new doctor with all this gray hair, so I color it for the first time in years.

On the way to the exam room in his office, I see the doctor standing in the hallway - fully gray. An older man, for sure, and I breathe a sigh of relief. We discuss the risks of a pregnancy at my age and somewhere in the conversation the doctor tells me his birthday. He's 6 weeks younger than me.

Emily is four months old at Michael's wedding. She's fourteen the year Nick and Casey marry. I'm a grandmother most of her life, but until RA, I'm able to keep up with her and her friend's mothers.

Having a baby in my 40's, I have a foot in multi-generations. From the time Emily is born, I have much in common with women twenty years younger than I am. I care for my elderly  mother in our home while homeschooling Emily, and the homeschooling mothers I fellowship with have children that will be in college and/or married when the mothers are my age, and the women my age have children in college. At the time, none of that matters.

With those twenty-three years of homeschooling squarely behind me, there's little about my life of interest today to younger women with whom I can't keep up.  Most of us prefer relationships with women our age and/or those with similar lifestyles, and I no longer fit in either category with many younger women. I don't travel in the same circles, and when Emily graduated from homeschooling, I moved out of the loop. The transition to a new one has been slow going. I've tried to fit in the old one, but I clearly don't. It's one of those walls I keep hitting my head against.

Don't misunderstand what I'm saying. I'm not complaining, neither am I ignoring the mandate for older women to mentor younger women. There are younger women in my life that I know God has placed there for me to encourage, and we learn from each other. I feature and ghostwrite for homeschooling publications, and I'll continue as long as they want me. My door, virtual and otherwise, will always be open, but I'm not going to try to fit in their circles. Along with my willingness to teach younger women, they need to be teachable and want a relationship with me. In the words of the Yankee sage, Yogi Berra...

If they don't want to come {to the baseball field}, you can't stop them.  

I've been rambling these thoughts about for a while - as my friend and mentor Patsy Clairmont would say, "between my two brain cells." They influence the goals I've set for the days ahead here on Pollywog Creek - goals I'll share more about in the future.

In the meantime, it's time I act my age with pride and gratitude for God's faithfulness to me over these sixty-two years, and without apologies for my gray hair, wrinkles and grandmotherly attire.

Anyone care to join me?

I will sing of the steadfast love of the LORD, forever;
with my mouth I will make known your faithfulness to all generations.  Psalm 89:1 ESV
{Photos - more Pollywog Creek backyard in this way-too-early spring}

The Color of September::to encourage...

{Introduction - Although you are welcome to use my living in yellow list, please know that I wrote it for me. I share a few truths and thoughts not that I think you need them, but that I need them, and writing about them helps me do just that. Part 1, Part 2, Part 3, Part 4, Part 5}

Therefore encourage one another  and build one another up,  just as you are doing.  ~ 1 Thessalonians 5:11 ESV
Focus on Encouraging Others 

The definition of encourage is to inspire with courage, spirit, or confidence. An encourager gives us the words and tools to be courageous, passionate and confident where ever we are in life and in our calling. 

Sometimes encouragement is approval, but it can also be the correction we need in our perspective or behavior. Whatever encouragement is, we all need it, and though scripture is our greatest source, scripture also exhorts us to encourage one another. 

When I wrote this list of goals a year ago, this one was initially: Focus on Encouraging others - Especially Younger Women, but as I've mingled more with women of all ages online, my perspective has changed a bit. I need to encourage all women - younger and older, because sometimes older women need the most encouragement of all - to feel needed and fulfill their purposes and to continue to grow and learn and live the life we've been called to. 

Older women likewise are to be reverent in behavior,  not slanderers or slaves to much wine.  They are to teach what is good,  and so train the young women to love their husbands and children,  to be self-controlled, pure, working at home, kind,  and submissive to their own husbands,  that the word of God may not be reviled.  ~ Titus 2:3-5 ESV

It's been my life experience - as a young woman and a not-so-young woman - that most of us tend to seek advice and encouragement from women our age.

To segregate into age groups or stage-in-life groups is a natural tendency. Most of us have been doing that all of our lives - from kindergarten to marriage. We naturally and rightfully enjoy the fellowship of link-minded women our age - with common interests and situations in life - and it's good, but when we remain in age and lifestyle segregated groups {both on- and off-line}, the younger women pass up good-as-gold wisdom and encouragement, and older women begin to lose touch with the younger generations and the complexities of a rapidly changing society, and they begin to feel useless and unwanted.

My observation is that the combination of younger women who are teachable and godly older women who are willing to open their hearts gave us the privilege of obeying the Titus mandate.

~ Susan Hunt, Spiritual Mothering

The point is - we need each other - teachable younger women and willing older women - to encourage and fulfill our purposes in the body of Christ.

I'd love to hear from you - are you teachable and willing, and where do you see mutually encouraging relationships between younger and older women or where do you see it is lacking - online or off?