This is JOY

This is ME.

And I can’t help but notice all the lines framing my eyes.

I’m sure I could photoshop (or inject) them away.

But really, who would want to???

Do you know how many laughs it took to create them???

Do you know how many countless times I found delight in the endless gifts of this world and squinched up my eyes and laughed a great big belly laugh to leave all those lines behind??

Day after day, month after month, year after year…laugh lines appearing like rings around the trunk of a tree.

If you count them, I bet there’s 42.

And those sun-spots on my cheeks??

Well, those tell of hours playing on the soccer field as a child then years later pushing brand new babies in strollers on summer days or now cheering from my folding chair along the sidelines…moment after moment after moment of turning my face toward the sun.

Yes, my breasts hang a little lower (and more unevenly) than they once did.

But I wouldn’t trade a perkier pair for one minute spent nursing my babies in the rocking chair or a single one of those milk-filled smiles.

My hips are wider now too.

My hair growing streaks of gray.

And my mom-tummy softer and fuller and traced with thin silvery lines that have faded now a few years after carrying beautiful new LIFE to this place.

So many lines and marks and imperfections.

All just a reminder of a life well lived.

Years of laughing and crying.

Of worry and sadness and struggle.

Of so very many grateful, happy smiles.

This beautiful, ordinary life I’ve been blessed with is evident right here on my body.

Etched in lines right here across my face.

This is my forties.

This is me.

This is a season of JOY.

And I wouldn’t change a thing.