Limited Options

Each year we take a family vacation to a certain beach. At some point, either over a cup of coffee on a covered porch or in a hired beach chair, I am usually able to let my mind roam just long enough to untangle my latest mental quandary. This year I had something quite heavy that I was hoping to lighten a bit with my infamous beach wisdom. I am not sure if it weighs any less, but I was able to bring a clarity that somehow made it manageable. As if it now can fit neatly in a simple canvas tote, instead of spilling awkwardly out of my often clumsy arms. As always, my thoughts flow best when I am writing, and things were no different this time around. Here is an excerpt from my journal on that quiet morning:

I have been a mom for nearly all of my adult life. My family is not the young family that it once was. No more holding hands in the waves just off the shoreline feeling reconnected and content from a vacation at the beach. We are all outgrowing this bond nearly two decades in the making. I read recently that middle age is a time of loss. Yet, somehow in my youth, I was fooled into believing that it was a place of stability and satisfaction. For me, it has brought the loss of my role as caretaker and mom and with that my identity. It has also brought the loss of assurance in my health and false sense of immortality.

As I say good-bye to the body, face and children of my youth, do I have something waiting? Something that lies beyond the customary church/community volunteer work or a second 'career'. Over the last few years, I have observed the limited options available for middle age rebirth and to me they seem so daunting and lifeless. Maybe, my sense of depression since the cancer isn't my awareness of my own mortality, but more the realization that the options left in the life I have to live feel like something to dread.

I know it isn't this way for everyone, but for me these options seem nothing more than fillers or a means to an end as my soul and body begin the slow quiet task of separating from each other. I don't mind or fear death; cancer cured me of that. I just hate what feels like the generic existence that the standard options on the back half of my life will bring. I am by no means an extraordinary person, but nor have I ever been an ordinary one. Perhaps, the best word for me is unordinary. This unordinaryness that makes up who I am, by its very nature, rejects what others seem drawn to.

Can I find other options? Can I live a life not defined by my generation but by my own carpe diem? I hope so. Because, Hope is what keeps us moving towards the future, which in essence is the definition of living.

Now faith is confidence in what we hope for and assurance about what we do not see.  -Hebrews 11:1