Reflections at Fifty Years

“Come, you who are blessed by my Father,
inherit the kingdom prepared for you from the foundation of the world.
For I was hungry and you gave me food,
I was thirsty and you gave me drink, I was a stranger and you welcomed me,
I was naked and you clothed me, I was sick and you visited me,
I was in prison and you came to me.”
Then the righteous will answer him, saying,
“Lord, when did we see you hungry and feed you, or thirsty and give you drink?
And when did we see you a stranger and welcome you, or naked and clothe you?
And when did we see you sick or in prison and visit you?”
And the King will answer them,
“Truly, I say to you, as you did it to one of the least of these my brothers, you did it to me.”Matthew 25:34–40

Dearest Daughters,

This week is a significant one for me—my fiftieth birthday. Whenever I reach a landmark year, I naturally step back and ask:

What has my life meant?

To God… to my family… to my friends… to the church. And perhaps most importantly: has it meant what it was supposed to mean? Looking back, I can now see that each decade had a different emphasis and focus for me.

My childhood was devoted mostly to growth—physical growth and mental growth, learning how the world works.

My twenties were the years of striving to find my place: marriage, babies, relationships, and a great deal of striving. I was always trying to figure out where I fit and what I was meant to be.

My thirties were similar, but the striving shifted. I spent much of those years trying to become what I believed others needed or expected me to be.

But my forties changed me perhaps more than all the years before. Instead of asking, Who am I supposed to be? I began asking, Who do others need to become, and how can I help them get there? And that’s when I finally became most effective at being who I was meant to be.

Let me tell you about something that happened on my fortieth birthday.

I was honestly dreading turning forty. Forty sounded much older than thirty, and since I’m nine months older than your dad, I had to live in my forties alone for nine whole months while he enjoyed teasing me about it!

When introducing us, he would say with a delighted grin, “This is my wife, Amanda; she’s in her forties and I’m in my thirties.”

Later, after he finally turned forty, he would introduce us as, “I’m forty, and she’s forty, too.”

Except he always said it in a way that sounded exactly like forty-two. I would immediately insert, “He means forty also!” (My reaction was, of course, exactly what he was hoping for.)

But the damage was always already done, which he found extremely satisfying.

Anyway, that February day, my dear friend Karen Borman hosted a birthday brunch in her little cedar-woods home. The tables were full of sweet and savory breakfast foods and a fizzy punch with sorbet floating in it.

But the real gift came when she stood and said: “For your fortieth birthday, forty people wrote letters about what you’ve meant to them.”

She read a few aloud and sent the rest home with me in a large folder. That night I lay in bed with the folder in my hands and began reading. As I read, a sort of trembling grew inside of me.

They were the kindest, most heartfelt letters I’d ever received. But not one mentioned the things I would have thought mattered most, the things I considered my gifts and callings, the things I’d given my life to.

Not my writing.

Not my teaching.

Not a testimony in a church service.

Not my inspirational speaking.

Not my singing.

Not even a birth of the hundreds I’d attended.

Instead, every single letter described tiny moments, most of which I did not even remember.

One said:

“I was walking past your house in the dark one night and you were watering your flowers. You looked at me and asked how I was doing, then invited me onto your porch and listened to my heart. I had never felt so heard or encouraged.”

Another:

“We were both in the back room nursing our babies. You listened and spoke the simplest words to me, but they changed my life.”

Another:

“I stopped by just to drop off cinnamon rolls while you were teaching school. You invited me in, and those few minutes changed the direction of my life.”

Forty letters—all like that. After reading them, I felt a real fear inside me. If these were the moments that truly mattered . . . how easily could they be missed?

That night I had to get back out of bed and pray. I asked God to forgive sins I didn’t even know were there—the moments I’d been too busy to see.

I remembered Jesus’ words: “Whatever you did for the least of these, you did for Me.”

And He said the people who did those things often didn’t know they had, and those who didn’t also didn’t know they hadn’t.

I realized my calling was not the visible work. The calling was for me to truly see people. From that point forward I began to try asking a different question:

Not: What is my calling?

But: What does this person need? Who are they in God’s eyes?

And this change brought clarity in my own work and life. Ironically, that was the decade when my outward fruit increased the most—writing books, mentoring midwives, teaching more effectively, and becoming a better mother.

I truly believe it is because productivity does not come from focusing on your purpose. It comes from loving people well.

So my prayer for you is this:

That you learn earlier than I did that the greatest moments of your life will rarely look important while they are happening. They will look like interruptions. They will be in ordinary conversations. They grow out of listening and allowing yourself to really see others.

But these are the very places where people meet God—through you.

When you reach my age, I believe you’ll find what I’ve found: that the deepest fulfillment comes when you live not for your own purpose, but for the good of another.

I love you all deeply,

Mom