OK! So, I am forty today! Yea, confession is good for the soul! The funny thing is that turning forty doesn't bother me at all! I feel younger than I did at thirty and I was much more upset when I turned 19. I think at that time I just wasn't ready to be done being a teenager. I spent the whole time being responsible and suddenly realized that I had wasted my chance to be foolish and wild. Now I have spent the next 20 years realizing that I am not 18 anymore - so now 4o is not a big deal. I have planned my life very strategically in that I have stayed in a culture that worships youth while I was young and now that I am getting old, I moved to an area of the world that esteems age. I think that we should all follow this plan - then everyone would be happy. The places that value age and wisdom would have a lot of it, and the places that value youth would not have anyone around who was wise enough to realize how foolish they were being - ignorance is bliss and all that. Or, better yet, they would get sick of the lack of wisdom and start to value age. After all, to get old is an accomplishment. In fact, I think that our definition of age is all messed up! I agree with Abe Lincoln when he said that "Age is not the number of days in your life, but the amount of life in your days". And someone else said that anyone who is not learning is old, it is the excitement and interest in the day to come that keeps you young. Proverbs 31 talks about a 'wife of noble character ...who laughs at the days to come..." I am here in a new world in which everyday is a learning experience and there is no way to plan or predict or even control what happens next. How can I do anything but laugh at the days to come. If all this is really true, then I am having an "un-birthday" because I am actually getting younger, one day at a time.