Turning Fifty

           

I think Franks Sinatra said it best in his song My Way.

                        “Regrets, I have had a few

                        But then again, too few too mention.

                        I did what I had to do and saw it through without exemption.

                        I planned each charted course, each careful step along the byway.

                        And more, much more that this, I did it my way….”

                       

           

I think while it’s true it was my way I am not sure it was all charted.  Some of those roads were a course given to me by fate.  I did the best I could.  Sometimes my best wasn’t good enough.  I have thought a lot about what I would change, or who I might have been but I keep coming back to one fact.  If any of it were different, I would not be me. 

So at fifty here are my biggest regrets

1.      I regret that I spent so much time looking for a love that I never found.  That search made me so insecure and I constantly felt I must be unworthy of being loved. It has been a hard journey to accept that I am worthy of love and that sometimes you can give away all the love in the world and it still won’t be returned.

2.      I regret that somehow or someway I didn’t find a place to have a better relationship with my daughter Rebecca.  I gave her up for adoption when I was a teenager. It was the right decision for both of us.  While, having her was hard and not the decision I would have made, I was always glad that she came into the world.

3.      I regret that sometimes I was blinded by my own pain and my journey that I missed that my friends and children were going through.

4.      I regret that didn’t do better managing money and making financial decisions because life would have been so much easier now.

5.      The biggest regret I have is not being better to me. I allowed the world to tell me I wasn’t enough and that I was less than.  It’s very hard after allowing the message to play to find a way to erase.  Astrid Alauda said it best, “The scars you can’t see are the hardest to heal.”

     So while they are few, I will mention them.  The grand side of life though is that I have had the great privilege to raise four children.  They all turned out with great individuality and incredible ability to love.  So while I did a thousand things wrong but I look at them and I know beyond any doubt I did a whole lot more right. 

     So for the next fifty years…  I think I will write a book about love and leave my sadness behind.  I will be more grateful for the wonderful blessings in my life.  I will appreciate time and spend it with quality. I will be more open minded, a better listener, and I will try to spend every day learning something new.  I will make more effort to spend quality time with the people I love and more picky about letting people in.  I will be better to my body.

     Life went by in a flash. Now I feel like the moments are ever so quickly slipping away.  My only wish is to make them slow down a bit so I have the time to tell the stories and pass on all the things I have stored away in my head.  I want them to understand before I go where I came from and why I chose the paths less traveled by.  Most of all, I will be more appreciative of all the love God filled my life with and less forlorn over the ones He didn't. 
     In the end,  its a number  50, granted a big number, but only a signal that its time to make the rest of life a much better path than the first part.  I have learned that only I have the power to make it better.  So I will try to make wiser decisions and do a better job.