So this is the end of a pretty bumpy decade.  Since I was born in 65 it is easy to to gauge things in decades, 5-15, 15-25, 25-35, 35-45, and now 45-55.  I am not 55 yet, but will be in March.  I have some memories from 0-5, but for the most part major things happen between the decades of the actual years, not the decades of my life.

So between 45 and now, I left the farm and the last home I owned.  Had sold my sheep. Eventually left Vermont, moved back to my childhood home with my Mum,  went to seminary, earned a M.Div, completed 2 years of residency, became a hospice chaplain,  fixed my busted pelvis and found remission.  Basically stayed the same weight and height. Cut my hair and now I am growing it.

Got sober, fell in love, restarted my yarn company. Got and lost a couple cats. Saw a daughter marry and have two kids. yup.. I am a grandmother.  There are some parts that were tough and some parts that are redemptive. I lost a lover to ALS and  I lost a true buddy to a brain tumor. Lost two friends to suicide.  Another buddy to breast cancer.  Gained some pals and let go of some that were not very good for me. I learned the difference.

Did a lot of writing, stopped writing and started writing again.  My voice came and went and has come back again.   Learned to listen to other’s stories and have learned to pick the salient pieces to repeat at the grave.  I have married, buried and blessed.  I have been in the company of the sacred and the profane.  I have been in the company of silent saints and performance preachers.  I have come to know the difference.

Searched for God in all the old places and found her lying in a nursing home calling me to take her braids out because they were too tight.   Ethel, which means Noble, called to me as I walked into her room for a hospice visit.

“Come here child, take out my braids, they are too tight.”  I told her I was the Chaplain, she didn’t care, she told me again “take out my braids, they are hurting me”. I went to get a nurse and was told “not now, she can wait”

I walked back in and she said for the third time “take out my braids”.

When a 98 year old, blind, black woman tells you to take you her braids three times, you do it.  God tells you three times when she is serious, you had best listen.   I bent over her and for the next hour and a half, I gently undid the braids to her satisfaction and when she said, “that’s fine child, now you can go”. I know I had been blessed.

When it is my time to make the journey, Ethel will meet me at the door to the Kingdom of Heaven and she will let me in.   But I am not ready to go any time soon.

I am looking forward to his next decade of 55-65.  Building a yarn company, helping my mum age in place, traveling and finding a retreat place that has sheep so I can recharge.  I hope to have more grandchildren, more fishing and more swims in the ocean on a late summer’s day.  I want to see the stars from my bedroom window. I want to hear the trees over the traffic.

I want to buy another motorcycle and ride it on roads where I worry more about hitting a moose then being hit by a car.  I want to get my pilot’s license and learn to fly a helicopter. I want to catch a native cut throat trout on a fly without a barb. I want to stay grounded and sober. I want to be part of the answer and not part of the problem.  I want to see more peace and less war. More satisfaction with what we have and less consumerism.

I want to be present, to be in the moment, to be authentic, to be me.

Name it, claim it. Wear life like a comfortable garment, loose. Let go of what holds you down and take what brings you joy.