This is me going for a walk outside, a practice I’ve prioritized for several months now. More on that at the end.
Today is my last day of being 40. If I look back at this year, two themes clearly stand out.
The first – Reconciling my current identity.
To move through life is to move through different stages, surround yourself with different people and cultures, and move through different seasons of responsibility. In the midst of moving through these things, habits and mindsets are collected, adopted, woven through everyday life – for better or for worse, even if some of those habits and mindsets no longer (or never did!) fit or serve the life stage being lived.
I have spent time this year examining and sifting through myself – looking at my values, my actions, my inner workings. Where did I get this weird social tic? How did I come to feel this about about that thing? Why do I do the things I don’t want to do and don’t do the things I want to do? In a nutshell, WHY AM I LIKE THIS?
Who am I at my core, designed by God, to be? And what does that mean about the way I live? How do I stop comparing and caring so much about who other people think I should be and how I should life my life? What is that gap between the way I want to, am MEANT to live and the way I am living and how do I build a bridge, a path, to make my way across?
The second – Shifting priorities and actions to fit my values.
I made a list at the beginning of the year about things that are important to me – faith, health, family, relationships. Creativity, joy, adventure, gratitude, peace.
and they did not at all fit at the time with how I was spending my time – work, freaking out about work when I wasn’t at work, multi-tasking to wring every moment for all it’s worth and people-please so I can prove my own self-worth, binging potato chips and cheese in my closet, numbing myself with social media and bad TV.
So I made the decision to make changes and do the hard work of laying down a path stone by stone (in fact, this path is not very linear and is often bumpy and encounters construction delays) towards a faithful, healthy, creative, joyful, thankful, and adventurous life with family and community. And doing my very best to go for a walk outside everyday was one of them.
Taking a walk is about a lot of things. Yes, I like to get my steps in because I am Type A like that. But in the end it’s a free and simple thing I do to value myself and my health. To clear my head so I can intentionally think about my day and which “stones” to lay down. To gain energy so I can show up as a better version of myself. To pray and acknowledge that, “Hey God – I trust you enough to stop being “productive” for 30 minutes and just look up and breathe.” A small point of surrender, peaceful movement, and centering in a world that can feel chaotic, loud, and dizzying.
This is how I’m rolling (or should I say walking) into 41. I don’t have it all figured out but I’m going to keep carefully placing stones and building my path.
Sindy Hankins 