What is it I want...

What do I want to do with my life? I am 53. I am not getting to the end of anything. I am ever on the look out for what I want to do next, how I can grow and change. There are so many things I have wanted to do in my life, but now at 53 what do I want to do...next.

I thought when I was a teen that if I didn't do "it" by the time I was 30 it was too late. When I was 35 I met a 70 year old woman who was walking her precinct, drumming up votes in her run for assembly woman for the state of Kansas. Our conversation marked a change in my life. I don't remember her name but I refer to her often. She had been a teacher, a librarian and had then retired. She was sitting watching TV and knitting when she heard on the news that an assembly person was needed for appointment in her district because the previous one had moved on to the national level. "Why not me", she thought and put in her bid for office. Here she was two years later, running to keep her seat in the state legislature and sitting across from me in my livingroom. I realized that day that it is never too late to do what I want in life.

I wanted to be a stewardess (they call them flight attendants now) so that I could travel the world and then my husband joined the Air Force and we did just that. I wanted to be a photographer and later bought a "real" 35 mm camera and became an amateur. I dreamed of going to Paris and then spent my 11th wedding anniversary there.

I wanted to be a wife who stood behind her man, encouraged him to be all he could be. I didn't always do a perfect job at it but he says I have inspired him to heights he would have never gone on his own. I wanted to be the best Mom in the world and while I tried to convince my daughters I was the worst mom ever they never believed me. (I believe there was a bit of reverse psychology happening there.) And when you get married at 16 and 36 years later are still madly in love with your husband, when you become a Mommy at 17 and have the most wonderful 3 daughters in the world...I have to think that He heard the cries of my heart and did work it all out.

Some dreams are still in the works. I always wanted to be in ministry with my husband and we are helping marriages before and during and are so blessed doing it. I wanted to be the best Gramma ever and I now have 15 grandchildren who think I am incredible!

So once again I have to ask, "what is next, what do I want to do"?

I have always wanted to write a book. If I stay at it maybe this will be my baby steps to that end. There are so many things in my heart that want to fly out, things the Lord has planted in me along my journey through life. I have lived a lot in 53 years, most of it married. I have learned a lot sometimes the easy way but mostly the hard way. I am a hard head who doesn't often believe something just because I was told it, I have to find out myself. Over time I have learned the wisdom of listening. I hope my head isn't so hard now.

Who knows where my journey will go from here. Maybe as I let flow some of my thoughts even answering some of the many questions I am asked something will come of this.

One thing I know for sure, a 70 year old woman taught me it is never to late to be what I want to be when I grow up!