Reflections at 41 on sparks, faith, and following whispers
When I turned 40, I asked a simple question:
Who will I be at 41?
Not what I would do.
Not what I would accomplish.
But who I would become.
Now the year has turned, and I find myself looking back at what was revealed.
Letting Go of What No Longer Holds
I laid things down:
ambition as performance,
the need to fix everything,
the belief that survival alone was enough.
I remember standing at the sink after another long shift,
hands wrinkled from hot water,
and realizing my worth didn’t live in titles or outcomes anymore.
It lived in whether I came home with enough presence
to sit with Maddie and Jack, to listen, to laugh, to hold.
And in the wider world, I began to see how much of our economy
is built on extraction —
how ambition has been turned into a system of burnout.
What once felt like success began to lose its meaning.
What remained was presence.
Seeing the Sparks That Stay
I realized that a spark isn’t something to ignite for show,
but something to live by.
I wrote The Holding out of an evening when Jack climbed into my arms,
looked at me through tears, and whispered,
“Just hold me.”
That moment became the teaching.
That was the spark.
And beyond my home, I saw sparks
in the quiet defiance of people choosing wholeness over hustle,
in communities reclaiming belonging,
in faith that still dares to see grace as gift,
not transaction.
I also noticed how sparks don’t just comfort —
they reveal ruptures.
Cracks in the way things are,
fractures in a society that prizes performance over presence.
These ruptures create space for grace to enter,
though we hardly notice it at the time.
The spark both exposes the wound
and
lights the path toward healing.
And beneath it all, I sense a global longing —
for healing, for wholeness, for spaces to simply belong.
That longing isn’t abstract to me.
I’ve felt it in rooms where people ache to be received
yet are asked to perform instead.
The more we ache for wholeness,
the more we are asked to prove ourselves.
The spark reminds me there must be another way.
Facing Fear, Remembering Faith
This year also revealed how close anxiety sits beside me:
the fear of not meeting financial needs,
the tension of providing for my children in unstable times,
the weight of tough situations that still lie ahead.
Yet in that space, I’ve also remembered my gift: Faith.
And with it, a compass I call GPS —
Grace, Presence, Spark.
Grace: the gift I didn’t earn but still receive.
Presence: the choice to be here, not elsewhere.
Spark: the quiet fire that reveals and heals.
It steadies my body, mind, spirit, and soul
so I can walk whole into each new day.
Growing Into a New Way of Seeing
I crossed thresholds:
from awakening into returning,
from knowing as accumulation
to understanding as embodiment.
I walked into Grace Lutheran one Sunday
with nothing to prove and everything to receive.
The sermon wasn’t just words,
it was a mirror —
reminding me that service isn’t an addition to life,
it’s the shape of a life.
And on the horizon, I saw how platforms and politics
keep turning meaning into performance.
Even wisdom gets packaged, sold, consumed.
That, too, is losing its weight.
But what endures is embodiment:
how we live the wisdom we already carry.
This year, I also grew into a new way of seeing:
not life as poles in opposition,
but as the thread in between —
the tension that holds them together.
Good and evil, joy and sorrow, faith and doubt.
Not enemies to choose between,
but crossings that make us whole.
Following the Whispers
I am still in discernment.
But I am beginning to follow the whispers —
not as title or position,
but as stewardship.
In conversations about the MAN and the parables,
in the quiet writing before dawn,
in the laughter at council meetings,
something keeps stirring.
A gentle refrain:
“Serve not because you have time.
Serve because you only have time.”
And in the currents around me, as wars rage, systems crack,
and even churches wrestle with survival,
I remember again what matters:
not permanence,
but presence.
Not certainty,
but grace.
At 41, the answer to my question is not finished.
But it is becoming clear enough to name:
I am becoming a rememberer —
a lantern-bearer in the dusk,
gathering sparks others forgot,
and offering them back as light.
Sparks that comfort.
Sparks that rupture.
Each revealing both the wound and the way grace can enter.
And my hope for the year ahead is simple:
to keep following the spark with quiet persistence,
to live in gratitude for all the other banyans in my river,
and to step into new beginnings with embodied presence.
I do not yet know exactly where these whispers will lead.
But I am listening, watching,
and crossing into what waits for me.
So I offer the same question to you —
not as challenge, but as companion:
Who are you becoming?
Not what will you do,
but who will you be when the next year finds you?
Because wisdom is not only how we live,
but how we choose crossing over crisis —
remembering what matters,
holding the thread in between,
and choosing belonging over performance
in a world aching for wholeness.
Not enemies to choose between,
but crossings that make us whole.
That ache is not the end — it is the opening.