Have been thinking a lot of about change lately.....about what to let go of and what to keep......an emotional housecleaning.......this has been something going on inside for over a year now.....letting go of old relationships.....old clothes....old beliefs......not so much about aquiring new things as it is cleaning out the debre and paying attention to parts of me that i've put in the
closet of my life....... certain things we feel we must keep such as family, jobs, homes........and its easy when we let the clutter pile up, to let those things which make us unique sort of sit on the shelf and gather dust..............losing focus ...........then suddenly when our inner self is feeling so left behind, so out of touch with the outer world and we find our inner selves silently screaming and demanding to be heard, appreciated, loved....... if this sounds strange to you or more like the rantings of a mad woman.....then count yourself fortunate......perhaps you have never left yourself behind......and catered to the demands of a life lived for others, husband, children, extended family, unfulfilling jobs, ........perhaps you have been able to hold on to what makes you ........you.......

When I was a child, I truly dreaded becoming middle-aged........that seemed the saddest part of life to me......all middle aged people always seemed so dull, robotic, mundane, sadly silent, envious of youth, despising of the elderly, with dull pasty looking expressions..........

I can remember asking God to just let me skip middle age and wake up in my 80's and be bent over and white haired, and loving children, and being accepting and kind.....that is how I saw the elderly.....an awakening from the death of middle age........

now that i am middle age, i understand the silence, the envy, the despising, and feel that i'm doing everything in my power to fight the enemy......and the enemy isn't time, or age, or circumstance........its giving up on who you were as a child, who you wanted to be but thought that you would be some sort of societal failure if you didn't follow the frequently traveled path.......its taking on a mind set that you have to be in control, follow some sort of scheduled planned out scheme to be on top of things, or else you will be a failure, an outcast......the enemy is giving up choice to accept change and embrace it and work with it........remember how when you were young all you wanted to do was be older........so that you could see more, go more, understand more........somewhere along the way, we have mistaken wrinkles, extra body fat, graying hair, as having arrived and now declining, when what really makes us has never changed.......we just thought it was suppose to be put aside and forgotten..........

I'll end with a line from one of my favorite songwriters of all time.......Bob Dylan.......

"I was so much older then........I'm younger than that now."