So, this is the middle?

Coming at you live....from the middle years, the Midwest, the middle of my mid-life crisis. I don't mean the kind of mid-life crisis where you get a "Live to Ride" tattoo emblazoned on your back, buy a hippie bus or a red sports car, and a run away with a cabana boy.  You are welcome, honey. I mean the kind where you wake up one day and say, "Now what?" or maybe "Is this really what it's all about?" or "There has to be more". This is the middle decade, the decade where your children  no longer physically need you as much and the one before your parents do.  I love this decade, I just don't quite know what to do with it.

The forties came in like a lion.  I had a renewed love affair with the elliptical machine and Ketel One, I found delight in the new found freedom of having "big kids".  I felt the need to live this decade up while my gray still sort of responds to bleach and my butt still sort of responds to squats.  My kids are no longer babies but years from being out of the nest, my parents are in good health.  This decade is the one.  The one to seize.  The one to take stock, what have I done so far and what do I want to do with the rest?  After sacrificing sleep, your identity, and your body in the early child rearing years....lovingly and unabashedly....you tend to lose sight of who you are and what you stand for.  Then you wake up one day and realize these babies will one day have their own lives apart from you and that day is inching closer every second.  Then you lose another best friend and the shit just got real. You realize your days are not infinite and you realize you better get busy deciding how you want to spend the next half of  this thing called life. (Cue the Prince song)

Now while looking 42 dead in the eyes, I recognize this restlessness as a yearning for something deeper.  Maybe we just all need more of the F word.  Fulfillment, people, fulfillment. I have learned where fulfillment is not.  It's not in that greasy plate of cheesy fries telling each other sad stories after a night at Power and Light went mostly wrong, it's not in that last Fireball shot after you have already had one too many, it's not in saying yes to an obligation you knew you should say no to, it's not in a paycheck that gave you more headaches than gratification (learned that lesson the hard way), it's not in that last day of carbs on a Sunday when you start the 17 Day Diet on Monday (for the 17th time). The pull is not towards a life filled with pondering existentialism over a Venti Skinny Vanilla Latte, hold the whip.  The pull is to figure out what makes you feel more deeply, more gratitude, more joy, more alive, how to do more good...more often?

Maybe fulfillment comes in small doses.  Maybe we just get fleeting moments of it and that is enough?  Maybe it is that moment when your teenager is not embarrassed to introduce you to his friends at a football game, when your husband believes you can do something more than you believe yourself, when you realize your parents are still your safe haven even at this age, when your friends will pull a Pinterest all-nighter with you when your heart is at its lowest sending you pins proving they know this ache intimately themselves and then another pin so inappropriate that you can't help but belly laugh out loud.  Maybe it is when you catch a glimpse of the sunset and it takes your breath away or it's found in long overdue conversation by a foggy creek bed in the wee hours of the night turning to morning.  Maybe it is 4:30 am church deep in the village of another continent, where fatigue and fellowship melt right into one melodic song and roll into the next.  Maybe fulfillment is knowing that you are raising three really good human beings that will someday stop and wonder how to best spend their days, get the most out of life, do the most good.  Maybe fulfillment isn't your heart firing on all cylinders all the time, maybe it is more subtle.  All I really know is that this part is full of possibilities and I plan on surrendering to and seizing the middle.