mid-dle adjective, noun, verb

1. equally distant from the extremes or outer limits, central.

2. intermediate or intervening.

3. medium or average.

“How old are you again?” my therapist asked me to remind her.

“Thirty-seven.”

“Hmmm.” That was her answer. And she smiled.

For weeks we’d been talking about the ins and the outs of my last year or so and together we were making progress. Sigh. That’s always good. Progress.

We’d talked about career stuff for me, family stuff, relationship issues and the things that have been weighing me down. I would say things like

I just don’t feel like myself.

I don’t know what I’m supposed to be doing.

I don’t know if I’ve done what I have done well.

She offered up something to me. “It sounds like you may have had a mid-life crisis.”

What. WHA. WHAA?!

Right. I’m not even close to forty (at least that’s what I like to tell myself). I haven’t gone out to buy a red corvette or signed up for liposuction.

“You think?” I asked her.

“Perhaps.” She answered.

And then we began to talk and it all began to make sense. I’m too old for a lot of stuff but too young to be old. I’m beginning to feel my mortality, thinking about the short future and wonder if I’ve made a dent. I’m wondering who this 30-something woman is and I’m questioning my own purpose.

The funk I’ve been in may be related to the fact that I’m realizing that I’ve lived over half of my productive life and feel like I don’t have a lot to show for it.

There have been beautiful glimpses of what life is supposed to really be over the last couple of years:

Holding the country of Peru in my heart.

Watching my daughter bond with a horse.

Late nights by an outdoor fire.

A community of writers on South Carolina sand.

Then several nights ago after dinner my husband said to me, “What AM I doing, Sarah?”

And we talked. What ARE we doing?

We aren’t doing anything bad or wrong and we are desperately trying to live a good story and raise our children well. But what ARE we doing?

Is our life too safe?

Should we be doing more?

Should we be doing less?

Where do we go from here?

What are we made to do?

The Markleys have crashed smack dab, head-first, up against mid-life.

But that isn’t the end of the story.

We can talk about the past and rehash the last few years if we really want to. We can mourn the loss of our house, feel the hurt and grief of the different communities that have wounded us, we can make second guesses on certain choices, but when all is said and done, we can’t change any of that. We can only move forward.

What do our next steps look like? Probably a lot like they have up until now. Our road might look a lot like the same road that we’ve been on because it’s full of days at the office and carpools and dance classes. It’s still full of emails and text messages and blog posts.

But I’m convinced that understanding the crisis is half the battle to making it something that you can use for progress. And knowing that the past can’t be changed is another part of the process.

Middle life is the life lived between our youth and our old age and between our energy and our rest. Middle life is the present years, the productive years, and now I believe, the beautiful years.

Whether you are in middle life like me or further along or further behind, let’s all commit to moving forward, being intentional about today, and finding ways to change tomorrow rather than worry about yesterday.

Where are you? Are you in middle-life, mid-life or something else? What are you learning about moving forward?

REI co-op is an adventurer’s heaven. A trekker’s dream. It’s the playground of backpackers and outdoors-people alike.

Ever been there? I used to go to REI with my dad as a kid way before it was cool. We’d make a stop there before our annual camping trip or before, as we got older, we accompanied him backpacking.

REI has every camping gadget, bio-degradable soap and freeze-dried food known to man. And more recently {especially since they built a brand new gorgeous REI near my house} I’ve been there for hiking pants and some minor supplies before our campout a few weekends ago.

Now granted, one does not need to visit the camping store before one camps. A person with a car can pull up alongside the road and stretch out in the back and fall asleep to the sound of the great-outdoors in one’s ears.

But one thing I’m learning about adventure, and a trip down the aisles of REI confirms it, is that most of the time it’s an intentional thing.

Adventurers don’t let adventure find them. They seek it out. They plan the hike, they research the trail, they get the right equipment. And then they buy the plane ticket.

So if life is an adventure, like we like to say it is, why do we make it seek us out?  Why aren’t we out there loving bigger and bleeding grace? Why aren’t we seeking out the hurt and the grief-stricken? Why aren’t we making better use of our time?

Our quick lives are full of turns and joys and disappointments. They were never meant to be comfort filled existences lived on sofa cushions. We were made for adventure, for living life in a a big way by sharing our hearts and our homes with the world.

Adventure doesn’t look for us, adventure must be made. And besides that, very few people ever had a great story to tell while sitting on the sofa.

What adventure will you make today? Who will you love? How will you use your time differently today?

Join me on A Deeper Story today. I’m writing about cheering when the villains “get it” in the end, offering mercy instead of judgement and what I’m learning in my own life about the apologies that never come.

Loving Mercy

I don’t care how much I say I love grace, but there are times when I really love it when someone gets his or her just end.

When the bad guy falls from the sky. When the murderer confesses at the end of a movie. When the serial rapist actually gets caught and is called to account for his crimes.

Yes. YES!I feel like good has won and everyone on the side of good has also triumphed. I brush my hands together, nod my head and whisper,

He deserved it.

I learned a long time ago that there are people in this unjust world who do very wrong things and will never apologize. They will never make amends. They will never fix what they’ve done. They’ll never confess, fall from the sky or get caught.

It seems to be how the world works.

It’s the guy who grabbed you in the 8^th grade and made you feel used and vulnerable or the best friend who walked away from you because she loved herself more than she loved you. It’s also the thieves and the child-wounders and the horrible people who never are caught.

Those loose ends do nothing to satisfy our human need for closure. We want justice. We want ending. We want finish. We want the ability to watch from afar and say,

He deserved it.

She had it coming to her.

We love justice much more than we love mercy. So much more, I think.

Early this year I discovered that some very valuable things had been stolen from me. From my home…

To read the rest, click here.

What does “loving mercy” look like in your life?

My husband gave up any love for solitary sports years ago. His ADD never let him enjoy things like golfing or fishing because by the 3^rd hole or by the time the bait was on the hook, he was already bored.

It’s why my kids have never held a fishing pole until last weekend. When we camp, we hike, we cook outside, we enjoy s’mores by the fire, but we have never fished.

Last weekend we camped with six other families with my fourth grader’s Girl Scout troop near a local lake filled with bass and other fish. On Saturday morning we sat down with the scoutmaster, got his run down on what you actually do with a fish once you catch it, how to cast correctly without hooking a fellow girl scout’s cheek in the process and then how to release it back into the lake safely.

The girls and the siblings and the dads put boats out or stood on the shore and cast their lines.

It quickly became the only thing Hope wanted to do all day.

She caught one in the morning, tried her hand in the afternoon, and went back and forth between the campsite and the little boat launch for most of the rest of the day. By sunset, when the fish became hungry again and the insects congregated in little swarms above the surface of the water, I saw her walk down to the shore once again.

I imagine she’d wandered, needing a little break from the din of the group of children and dust and tents and went off to explore.

A few minutes later one of the kids broke into camp at a sprint. “Mrs. Markley!!! Hope’s caught another fish!” We all took off at a run, knowing that this, as simple as it was, was a big deal.

She held it up with the assistance of another dad, laughing and giggling and almost dropping the bass into the sand. It seemed as if she hadn’t just caught a fish, but that she’d found something.

She seemed to find confidence, an ease with herself and a gentle satisfaction in something she’d done. In some ways it was simple, almost forgettable, but in other ways it was significant.

In the last minutes before we all lost the light, she turned and played with her friends. Girls and boys, young and happy and exhausted and dirty, scrambling over rocks and logs and living in a magic moment that none of us will ever be able to get back.

As hard as it is to see her grow up, I love watching her.

She’s reaching into life, dabbling in what looks safe and what speaks to her soul. I watch her and I ache for her, hoping she’ll find what she needs, that she’ll learn to trust Jesus in ways it took her mother too many years to learn.  That’s my only wish for her, for them.

That they’ll find those regular things that let them find Jesus every day. So I’m going to encourage her to fish, to ride, to draw and paint because I know in that there can be a simple communion with the Creator in ways that we, child or grown, cannot find in other places. 

Did we find God in a fish this weekend? I think we found a new joy in something very simple: people, children, sunsets, campfires, fishing poles. I think I found a new beauty in my ten-year-old and I know we found a perfect spot by a lake in the middle of the city that we never new was there.

So yes. I think we did. Find God. In a fish.

Update — Video of Hope catching the fish! You have got to see her grin =)

Have you found God in an unexpected place recently?

It’s all about self-control. And about love.

Our whole lives worth of personal struggles find their way back to self control: exercise, dieting, keeping my heart from wandering. They are all issues of self-control.  Our lives drip with the need to continuously bring ourselves under the control of the Holy Spirit.

That’s why as, last week, my six year old tantrumed for some forgotten catalyst and I walked her out of the public place we were in, I understood that this was a simple battle of wills and a battle of self-control. She screamed and pulled and I sat down across from her at a picnic bench outside.

Discipline when frustrated.

Control when angry.

Calm when upset.

“I’ll sit with you all day until you calm down and we can talk.” I told her.

No good. No good at all. She was just crazy-angry. I waited and she screamed. I waited some more and she yelled some more.  Her anger and frustration had taken different iterations of words, physical actions and tears in the last 20 minutes and I could see she was wearying by the circles under her eyes.

“I’m just SO MAD!” She yelled and pounded a fist on the table. Her tears were angry.

I took a deep breath and saw the little girl in her eyes. And I knew she was me, not just at age six, but me now. When I pound my fist and want my way, when I stomp and scream and make everyone around me embarrassed because of my behavior.

“You can hit me and kick me and scream at me all you want. But I will still be your Mama and I will still love you.”

Something in her tiny body broke.

“Really?” She asked. Her tears were turning from anger to relief. “After ALL of that, you’ll still love me?”

Yes.

Yes.

And He comes over to where we sit and He scoops us up and He carries us close and whispers, “After all of that, I will still love you. I will always love you.”

I will sit with you until you are calm.

I will be here when you are out of control.

I will be even when you are angry.

And I will always, always love you even when you don’t seem to love Me.

I’m on (in)courage today talking about dead frogs and barns and grudges. It’s a slice from my girlhood.

Catching Frogs

From suburban Southern California, my family made the trip to Northern Indiana during a handful of summers when I was a little girl to visit my mother’s parents who were aging but not yet old.My grandfather did many things: he was a college professor, he mentored teenagers, he was a property manager and he ran a working farm. All at the same time.

As girls, we didn’t need a playground because my sister and I had nearly free reign of the property. After visiting the horses, running through the rows of prickly cucumbers and passing the chicken coop, we’d run up to the hay barn. All we needed was a barn full of bales upon bales open on one side to the Indiana summer.

We climbed and ran and jumped and fell and scraped little arms on the scratchy bales. And we caught the tiny frogs that lived in and near the hay. My sister and I competed to see who could catch the most.

The only way to hold a little frog, if you are a little girl, is in your little summer hand.

The frogs were so small that even our little hands held several at a time. We’d catch and hold, and catch another and hold and stuff them into one hand while we used the other to climb and catch more frogs.

With one hand full of amphibians, we ran full speed back to the house, fully intending on showing our “crop” with our mother. We expected the frogs to jump wildly out of our hands as we opened them in front of her summer skirt.

I called for her as I climbed the back porch steps and when she came to meet us, I unclenched my fingers.

Six little frogs. All dead…

To read the rest, click here.

If you put it up against the theological truth that inside each of us is a soul already loved by God, then it is false. We are already loved, we are already chosen, we’ve been plucked from the abyss by a God whose love extends to the farthest reach of time and space.

And we are already loved. From before we were made.

But let’s turn this idea on its side.

{Because I just can’t seem to get this tiny corner of a song lyric out of my head.}

When we choose each other, we choose to love each other. We pick friends and husbands and have babies and make them LOVED. We turn them into loved beings because they are loved by us.

Being loved by people is important because it’s the tangible touch of Jesus-who-loved-us-before-time-began.

I think we underestimate the power that our affection has in the life of another human being.

When we value them, when we intentionally love them, we help them understand the innate worth they have as a person.

This short, itty-bitty idea is all of it. When we love, we help others realize how much they are loved by their creator.

 Who do you need to love today? Who has helped you feel loved by God?

We all need friends who will ebb with us and flow with us.

Who will mark out for the weekend, leave the kids with the husbands for 30 hours and meet me in a city by the sea.

We need those TV-watching friends, those its-ok-to-be-silent friends, those hold-hands-while-we-carry-each-other-to-Jesus friends.

We need those friends who have walked the journey and will continue to walk the way with us.

There are times for meeting new friends and for making new laughter, but there are also times for gathering the old and comfortable around us like a sweatshirt that has only gotten softer and more familiar with age.

I hope you don’t think me selfish, but I knew that my soul needed a real-life day or two with an old friend.

Sometimes community looks like a new shiny bicycle with a bell begging to be rung. We make new, interesting friends whose heart-depths are waiting to be explored. We exchange phone numbers and make dates to meet and we wonder at the excitement of a new soul-friends.

 Sometimes community looks like the middle life: husbands and children and other mothers at school who need the pages of homework assignments. It looks like cups-of-coffee shared before school lets out at 3:05 and it looks like knees and hearts together while our six-year-olds dance ballet.

And other times community looks like the ease and gentleness of old friendships. It looks like decades buried memories, relaxed laughter and the familiar thought that we’ve-done-this-all-before. It looks like old words shared over new cupcakes and old rhythms set to new music.

So this weekend, my journey took me to a community of two. And I really believe that where two are gathered in community, whether new or old or middle-life, there is Another who also communes.

 Did you experience community this weekend? With whom? Do you prefer to be in large groups or in settings of 2 or 3?

All photos in this post by this lovely woman who I’ve journeyed with for almost 20 years.