Should I Really Be This Excited?

Today is November 17th and I am exactly one month away from turning fifty years old. Fifty. The big 5-0. A half century. Should I really be this excited?

I know women who just turned thirty this year and they were depressed on their birthdays because they were no longer twenty-something. I spoke to one just last week who is four years away from turning forty, and she said she's already getting sick from the thought of it. Women, in general, are known to be a gender of people who view getting older as some kind of curse. Most men embrace it, while most women avoid it like the plague. Countless of us lie about our age or won't reveal our age; all because society has somehow convinced us that advancing in age is something that we should be ashamed of.

When I was a child, a teenager, and even in my twenties, I thought fifty was ancient. It seemed so very far away that I didn't even try to imagine myself in this place. Now it is upon me. From the time I graduated high school in 1984, time seemed to be placed on fast forward. The second twenty-five years of my life seemed to have passed far more quickly than the first. But somehow I don't view myself as aging or old. I haven't a smidgen of sadness or depression. The last time I was this excited about a pending birthday was when I was turning forty . . . ten years ago.

I LOVE LIFE, and in order to continue to enjoy living, we must get older. The alternative to getting

older is to die. The only way to stop our birthdays is to stop our breathing. If God handed me a choice to go back ten years and be forty again or even rewind twenty years and be thirty again, I wouldn't take it. I'm far happier now. What I went through in my thirties and forties doesn't even come close to being worth revisiting them and redoing it all over again. I look back over my life and realize how BLESSED I truly am. So YES... I am excited!!

I'm excited because what the devil meant for evil, God worked for my good. I'm excited because the enemy's plot couldn't overtake God's plan. I'm excited because God brought me through the fire without the stench of smoke. I've been deceived and disrespected. I've been abused and misused. I've been lied on and lied to. I've been played and betrayed. The things I've been through could have been the death of me and should have been the death of me. BUT GOD!!! He dried my tears and rewarded my faithfulness with joy unspeakable. While the enemy watched and waited for my demise, God gave me new life and brand new reasons to live it. People wonder why I'm the way I am. Why my life is so purposeful; why my Christian walk is so passionate; why my outlook is so positive. It's all because I know where I am versus where I could be. It's all because I know what is versus what should be. It's all because of Christ. Oh... how I love Jesus!

Where I am now in my spiritual, physical, professional, and emotional life is exceeding abundantly above all that I could have asked or thought. I don't deserve it. It's FAVOR. I'm not a perfect woman, but I'm perfectly designed by HIM. I don't have the perfect life, but it's perfectly orchestrated by HIM. All of my shortcomings. All of my accomplishments. All of my valleys. All of my mountain tops. Every single thing that God allowed me to endure and experience in the past was to bring me to this moment in time. It's my season. I'm in a new chapter... Chapter 50 ... and God has only begun turning the pages to the best parts of my life's story.

As an online ministry sister reminded me a few days ago... My best is not yet to come. It's already here, written by God's pen before the beginning of time. And page-by-page, He is revealing it both to me and to the world. No . . . My best is NOT yet to come. My best is yet to MANIFEST. Should I really be this excited? YES!!! As a matter of fact, I just got more excited than ever!