I'm going to trun 40 this year and sometimes it bugs me and sometimes it doesn't. I think what eats people about getting older is it just makes them aware of the things that come with time. Like wrinkles and the ability not not move as fast as we once did or that our bones ache a little at the end of the day. I'm not fond of the wrinkes, but something I am happy about is the wisdom I have now. This isn't to say I am bursting with wisdom, but I see things now in a way I had never seen them before.

Just 10 short years ago, I still got upset at the past and the things that happened. And when I say past, I mean when I was 18, 19, 20. I didn't understand why I had so much heartache during that time in my life. I thought there would never be someone to love me. I ended up being totally wrong about that, but for many years, even after I was married, I let this black cloud hang over me and bring me down. I was always wondering why I hadn't had love in my life. Why had it taken so long to find someone? It was a painful time and that continued to live inside me.

It's taken 20 years to realize it was for the better that I didn't have someone in my life back then. I was just too young and naive to know how to deal with a relationship. I made a few mistakes and had I been involved with someone, I would have made many more mistakes. I hate to even imagine the mistakes. I'm better off having had things happen the way they did. And had my 40 year old self appeared to my 20 year old self as a prophet and explained this, the 20 year old would never have believed it. "Clearly this prophet is mistaken. I mean, who is better off without true love in their life?"....I would have been saying. Had the 40 year old prophet gone on to tell me I'd meet a navy man in a bar on my 21st birthday and marry him 4 years later.....well, that would have just sealed the idea that this prophet was full of crap.

So the older I get, the more I understand why things have happened and that what you think will or won't happen is too hard to judge. I'm sure in 10 years I will figure out even more things and find it easier to look back and say it's best things happened they way they did. And I will be lucky for things I never dreamed possible.

Time may not be kind to my body, but at least my mind is resting easier.