I felt foolish. I tried to not take her remark too “severely” into my heart. It wouldn’t have been good to myself given the rigorous day ahead. This poised and beautiful woman ardently said that she wasn’t fifty years old! “Oh, I am sorry,” I apologized. “I must have heard wrong. You have five children? Oh, my goodness! I had no idea. How old are you, anyway?” I must have overheard someone else’s conversation the night before saying that both she and her husband were turning fifty this year and that’s why her husband had traveled with her for the weekend. I actually didn’t feel as bad as I might have in the past.
As we walked to the back porch of the school she said that she was only forty-seven! I thought to myself, “Well, Becky, you weren’t too far off!” It reminded me of how big turning fifty is. I remember a bit of the pending agony before I turned fifty. And now, fifty seems quite young and long ago. As we rode quietly up the elevator, I breathed in the goodness of no longer feeling afraid of turning fifty and not owning shame over this small incident.
The following week my husband and I decided to spend a couple of days with our daughter and her family. We packed a shared suitcase and Annie’s birthday presents and made the 11:35 ferry. We looked forward to spending time with our grandsons, Van and Cole. I hadn’t been at their home since the first week of school. Where had the time gone?
The rain gloriously stopped once we crossed the floating bridge to Mercer Island. While eating lunch together the clouds began to disperse! Without any discussion, we put on our coats to take a walk. It’s what we do in the Northwest, especially if there is hope of a “sun break.”
We walked briskly behind the boys who were riding their bikes. Our conversation with our daughter and her husband flowed easily after not having been together since Christmas. Somehow, once again, I mistakenly mentioned a “miscalculation” of the amount of years. “We haven’t lived in our home eight years!” Annie said with annoyance. I felt foolish and the sting of being wrong without meaning to came again. I am trying to not react harshly towards myself these days. It is new for me to not live with demeaning disdain for any minor infraction. “Oh, how many years have you lived here?” I asked. My daughter replied quickly, “Six years!”
Once again, I quietly kept walking and thought to myself, “That wasn’t such a horrific mistake. It’s alright, Becky.” I calmly breathed in grace upon my mistake. It’s new for me to let these corrections slide off my back.
I actually wonder why it’s taken me so long to live with freedom in being wrong.
Is aging a fear for my daughter, as well as, the forty-seven-year-old woman? Fear that if they had lived in their home for eight years instead of six years that would mean that she was two years older than she is? Is it so fearful to have a birthday these days? Is this how we are living? Is this life in America today?
Van and Cole are seven and nine years old. I cannot help but wonder when they will not want to tell anyone that they are older than they would like to be. When did that begin for me? I started counting children instead of years to avoid the pain. Dan had a rough time turning thirty. His mother never told her age to anyone! She lied to her partner saying she was fifty-nine instead of sixty-nine! Whatever age seems right, I think the given age is my only choice. I don’t like what I am seeing, but as I said, I am breathing in more grace with every breath.
Aging is a death before a death. If we stayed the same, I would keep caring about my appearance just as much as I cared about it when I was young. But, alas, I am becoming a bit like The Velveteen Rabbit with one lost eye, fur rubbed off, but more loved and more real.
Becky Allender lives on Bainbridge Island with her loving, wild husband of almost 40 years. A mother and grandmother, she is quite fond of sunshine, yoga, Hawaiian quilting and creating 17th Century reproduction samplers. A community of praying women, loving Jesus, and the art of gratitude fill her life with goodness. She wonders what she got herself into with Red Tent Living! bs
May the GOD of all grace bless you and all one eyed, furless, well loved and loving Velveteen Rabbits!
Bonnie, thank you for understanding the “okay-ness” in embracing one eyed and furless rabbits!
As the fur rubs off, may our true, real selves become more apparent! Becky, you so eloquently wrote what so many of us feel. Thank you for sharing this!!
Barbara.thank you! Your kindness is felt all the way to my heart. Our journey to heaven brings us closer to grace.
Becky,
Your words, “Aging is a death before a death” resonated deeply with me as I contend with my own aging body. Thank you for reminding me that I too can claim my own Velveteen Rabbit-ness and love and bless my worn, rubbed off parts because they make me real (and lovable).
Thank you for your words, your vulnerability and your truth. I hope you can continue to bless your new found freedom to be wrong as it makes you so very real, wise and beautiful.
Laurie, thank you. Your words are like a warm, cozy room after a long cold walk. I love what you wrote: “Thank you for your words, your vulnerability and your truth. I hope you can continue to bless your new found freedom to be wrong as it makes you so very real, wise and beautiful.” It truly IS good to embrace the wrong and allow grace! I trust if I keep doing that, life will be a bit more fun and people will be much more enjoyable! Who knew?
I love it, more loved and more real.
Yes, there IS hope in being more real! What do we have to lose?
I love every word!!!!! And yes… let’s celebrate our Velvetteness… not dreading the ticking of the clock… but celebrating with every tick we can become who were truly are meant to be!!!!
Oh, Ro, yes!! I love how you said that: “let’s celebrate our Velvetteness… not dreading the ticking of the clock… but celebrating with every tick we can become who were truly are meant to be!!!!”
Thought I would share this song https://youtu.be/2Dho9x6oIWs
Ro, thank you. I just listened to the song you sent. So beautiful. It was a great beginning to my day as the sun slowly begins to bring light. Love to you across the many miles…
I think the given age is my only choice…
Yes! I am loving 51. The 40s were incredible but also challenging. In my 50s I feel more fully in my skin, more fully me, quicker to breathe in grace.
Grateful for that phrase today on your writing. A good way to begin Saturday.
And moving from phoenix to the PNW means we will learn to treasure the sun.
What!!! You are moving to the PNW!? And…thank you. I think you are right…the fifties offer new grace and more freedom and more “me-ness”.
Yep. Portland-ish.
Becky you definitely don’t LOOK like a well loved Velveteen Rabbit, but I definitely like the symbolism. You are beautiful! Being wrong about anything is difficult for lots of us! You’re giving yourself grace following the example of our Gracious Cheerleader. Yay for grace for ourselves and others. Thanks for reminding us!
Laura…ahh, the “Gracious Cheerleader”. I love that. I have never heard Jesus called that but you nailed with that. Grace….what a gift. I hope to become more and more acquainted with Grace…
I thought you might find this writing from ANN VOSKAMP of interest…………Blessings! Bonnie
The Seven Questions Your Soul Is Asking Even if You Don’t know It — & how You Can Get Real & Be Part of the Answer We All Need
It came kinda out of the blue.
Came kinda because I felt blue?
Because I felt old? Felt old and wrinkled and worn and wearing out?
Maybe those words, that question, actually came right then because I was feeling how the children he and I had made together, with the kind hand of the Divine, they were moulting out of their childhoods all around us.
All four of our boys now stand taller than their fine dad. Not one of the men-child I’ve carried and birthed and carried again are less than a strapping 6 feet tall now. Turns out? Parenting children you literally have to look up to– keep you parenting from the best posture of all.
The first two boys I taught how to count and engineer block towers? Are now counting down terms to university graduation and building a dream as a computer engineer.
That third boy with shoulders broader than his dad’s, he’s out seeing the world through a lens and giving me fresh eyes that enlarge this old beat-up heart, and the last boy, the grinning one gunning to be the tallest, he made us dinner last night and the night before that and there’s hardly a day goes by that he doesn’t hug me half a dozen times, kissing me squarely on the top of my head.
Who ever expected living to mean so much joy and so much heart ache?Love and pain are the two chambers of the same heart that pump courage through the aching veins.
They have made me brave, and they have kept me humble, and they have made me white-knuckle cling to the cross because my very sanity and life flat out depended upon it, and the children we have made are always part of our own remaking. Parenting makes you real God-dependent and real honest and velveteen real.
And I guess I can just say it — how I have been made velveteen by the years that have been. Our oldest girl’s applying to university medical programs and her love heals a thousand broken places. And our middle girl can do 50 pushups with her sister on her back, and can I just ask all the questions: Where did all the mirage of time go?
Our youngest daughter wrote a row of F’s and E’s on her own yesterday and smirked like she was the cat who’d swallowed a canary — and taken wing.
And it’s my heart that keeps falling as these fledgelings begin to fly. Anyone know? Where did all this glorious time go?
Parenting is about swallowing hard and staying soft — and mastering the art of letting go and holding on and letting come what comes.
I have stumbled hard but I vow I have tried to live it:
Life isn’t about slowing down how fast time goes — it’s about taking the time to slow down your life to enjoy whatever comes.
And I think that’s what I was thinking — about kids and the fleeting brevity of time and all my growing crow’s feet and these wrinkling hands and watching the way the light fell across the fields and how I could feel my aching soul burning right there like an ember in my throat.
That’s when, somewhere between the waiting woods and home, that I turned to him behind the wheel of his Dodge Ram and tried to find the words to even ask:
When all the years make you velveteen, how will your soul be seen?
I just need to know?
I don’t even know how to ask him —
When the years wear me down till I’m only my tender soul, will you still look at me as your one and only?
And maybe I don’t even have to open my mouth and ask the question? Maybe I am always asking the question with my life? Maybe….. without even knowing, we’re asking questions, whose answers we’re feeling without even knowing.
Maybe — everywhere we go, we’re asking these questions silently, and they are silently being answered everywhere we go.
And just before we find ourselves already home, I almost dared to say, what I’m only starting to see:
There are these seven questions a soul is always asking:
Am I looked for?
Am I looked out for?
Am I looked over?
Am I looked down on?
Am I looked at as enough as I am?
Am I looked into because what is in me is priceless to you?
Am I looking up to the way of Abundance — looking up for more grace, more love, more joy, more Jesus?
I turn to him, and realize I didn’t want to ask one question: my whole life has been asking these seven questions.
What we all really are looking for — is someone really looking for us.
I catch my reflection in the truck mirror — and isn’t that it? However we see ourselves being seen, becomes the mirror by which we see the world.
If we see ourselves as seen as not enough — we see everything through a fog of scarcity.
If we see ourselves as seen as more than enough — we see everything with the clarity of abundant security.
How we see ourselves being seen — changes how we see everything. And every single person you meet is looking to see — how you see them.
Am I looked for?
Am I looked out for?
Am I looked over?
Am I looked down on?
Time is short — look into eyes long. I look down at hands looking like my grandmother’s. Look over at him, turning up into our farm laneway.
There is only so much time here. Be all here.
Without any words, everyone everywhere is asking if you love them, without any conditions.
I read his eyes, how all our eyes all asking the same seven questions all the time:
Am I looked at as enough as I am?
Am I looked into because what is in me is priceless to you?
Am I looking up to the way of Abundance — looking up for more grace, more love, more joy, more Jesus?
How we look at each other — is how we love each other. How we look into eyes is how we love each other’s hearts.
Every heart loves deeper — when their eyes linger longer.
And I grab his hand. His smile finds mine — makes mine. We find each other’s eyes.
The hands of the clock can move on — but our eyes don’t ever have to move on.
Our eyes will find each other and remind each other, and by the outrageous grace of God, there is abundantly enough time to make our lives whisper the answer to every single person’s question:
You are looked for,
and you are looked out for,
And you are never looked over,
and you are never looked down on,
and you are always looked at as enough just as you are,
and you are looked into because who you are is priceless to me,
and together we will keep looking up to the way of Abundance —
looking up for more grace, more love, more joy, more Jesus.
And a soul can know —
When the years wear you down till you’re only your tender soul, you will still only be beautiful to behold.
After he and I walk up the back walk to the farmhouse kinda rocking and swaying with our nearly grown tribe, his worn hand warms mine, and we linger a bit to watch the blue edges of the sky bleeding into a twilight gold, and for a holy moment the world softens and there is time to look and see.
The abundant way of us all becoming velveteen.
~Ann VosKamp
Thank you, Bonnie! I especially loved the ending: “Our eyes will find each other and remind each other, and by the outrageous grace of God, there is abundantly enough time to make our lives whisper the answer to every single person’s question:
You are looked for,
and you are looked out for,
And you are never looked over,
and you are never looked down on,
and you are always looked at as enough just as you are,
and you are looked into because who you are is priceless to me,
and together we will keep looking up to the way of Abundance —
looking up for more grace, more love, more joy, more Jesus.
And a soul can know —
When the years wear you down till you’re only your tender soul, you will still only be beautiful to behold.
After he and I walk up the back walk to the farmhouse kinda rocking and swaying with our nearly grown tribe, his worn hand warms mine, and we linger a bit to watch the blue edges of the sky bleeding into a twilight gold, and for a holy moment the world softens and there is time to look and see.
The abundant way of us all becoming velveteen.
~Ann VosKamp”