Fifty-Two in Fifty-Two!

Can you believe this is my 52nd blog in 52 weeks!  When I started this journey, I made a commitment to write one blog a week for a year, and to do in on a regular basis so that people would know they could follow consistently.  I am amazed at the response I have received from writing these blogs.  I have a total of 92 followers on the actual blog page, and I have 101 people who follow my blog through Facebook.  I am simply overwhelmed by that.  I hope that each of you who are reading this, have received something, even if a tiny nugget, from these blogs.

As I have mentioned in past blogs, I went through the experience of working with a life coach, and because of that experience, I trained to be one also.  While I was in the coaching program, my coach suggested I write a book.  One thing that coaches do is throw out an idea and see if it sticks.  If it doesn’t they move on with it.  I told my coach that I did not have enough of anything to write a book.  He then said I should write a blog—he thought I had stories and life experiences to share.  I remember commenting to him that I cannot imagine anyone wanting to read my blogs.  Ha!  I now have 193 people who regularly have access to my blogs.  Who would have thought?

I went a number of years without even those thoughts in my head to be writing about my life experiences and how I see the world.  Then for some reason last year, I started
thinking about it.  Why not give it a try?  I played with a few blog titles of what I thought would be suitable.  “Andrea Unsinkable” just seemed to fit me.  I have had a lot of things in my life that brought me down, and sometimes I thought that was where I would stay, but then I would just pop up again, sometimes maybe only enough to take a breath, but i realized that I was unsinkable!  

I don’t know how I got to here—the place I am today.  The path was never straight.  We go up and down, and sideways, and sometimes we think we will never find the place of true contentment.  Isn’t that what we are really looking for?  Not giddy happiness because we know that is fleeting, but good ol’ solid contentment.  I am finally content.  I am at peace with God, peace with myself, peace with all the dirty rotten things that have happened to me, some my fault and some because it just happened to me.  Every one of those experiences made me the person I am today.  The things I think deeply about, the people who I care about, the career moves I have made, have all been orchestrated so beautifully in a way I could not have imagined.  It took all that stuff, good stuff, mediocre stuff, and bad stuff, mixed up together, stirred, shaken, baked a bit, and I see the beautiful life that God has given me.  I see the lessons I learned as the opportunity to stretch and grow.  Sometimes I went through these battles kicking and screaming, and sometimes I just sailed right along.  

The other day I looked in the mirror and was surprised to see this older woman looking back at me.  It was rather shocking, because I don’t know when that happened.  I will be 70 years old in December.  That kind of blows my mind.  None of my milestone birthdays have felt as awkward as this one coming up.  Maybe that’s why my high school class is getting together in September to collectively celebrate our 7th decade of life.  (Shout out to Lindbergh High School, St. Louis, Missouri, Class of 1966–I love you all)!

It is very weird to think I am in the “autumn of my life.”  I may be in the “winter.”  I have many friends who have passed before they turned 70.  I used to think 70 was old.  My mom used to talk about the bible saying we get “three score and ten.”  She would say that anything beyond that was a blessing—my mom made it to 75.  That’s not very old in my book.  Why do I not feel old?  I should restate that, because there are days that I feel a bit achy.  That never happened 20 years ago.  In my head, I feel young.  I love life, and I love connecting with people of all ages.  

So, in my 68th to 69th year, I have had the privilege to reach out to people of all ages, races, genders, and share my story.  I hope you got to laugh.  I hope you didn’t cry, because my bad days were short lived.  I hope you learned that you are not alone in the challenges in your life.  We all have challenges.  We all have scars.  I think I have grown more by being willing to finally tell my stories.  

In three weeks, my husband and I are going to Europe.  I have never crossed the pond, and I am pretty excited about this trip.  My son married a wonderful woman from Germany, and we are going there to celebrate their marriage with her family and friends from her home country.  We will be going to England and France also.  Never in a million years did I ever think I would get to take a trip like this.  We will be gone for three weeks. Then we will come home, and have barely a week to recover from our jet lag, and we will hop in our car and drive to Arizona to close on a new house, where new adventures in our lives will begin.  On top of all that, we are putting our beautiful home in the woods on the market.  We hope and pray that someone will move here and their family will love this place as much as we have, and will make new wonderful memories here.  We will be making new memories in a new living situation of downsizing our lives.

In the meantime, you will probably not see any original postings until I return from all this traveling at the end of June.  I am planning on reviewing my previous 51 blogs and re-sharing the ones that really still have an impact in my life or I feel would just be fun to read again.

Thank you, all my wonderful blog followers.  Please do not go too far. I will be back with new stories.  My head and my heart are full, and I love sharing my life with you.  Knowing people from all around this globe are reading my words, just makes me smile.  I hope you are smiling also.  I love each and every one of you!