I am having an identity crisis.  I am the mother of someone the age I was when I got married and started my "adult" life.  And I am understanding every day, more and more, what my own mother must have felt when I launched out on my own, thinking I was *so* smart, and that she was just too old to understand.  How unfair!  When she said, "You just wait till you have kids of your own someday..." I wasn't supposed to really understand what that meant when I got to be her age! I was smarter.  I would do things differently.  I would be the exception to the rule that "what goes around comes around."  Nope.  Life's pretty much the same for everybody, I'm figuring out.  Oh, we can do things God's way, and they'll most likely turn out better, but in general, we all go through the same ages and stages, and there's no getting around it.

I was thinking, too, the other day, about how much being a parent helps us to see ourselves the way God must see us.  We know how it *feels* for our children to hurt us, find fault with us, smirk at us, be impatient with us, disrespect us.  No, thankfully, it doesn't happen a lot around here, but it does happen.  They are individual people, growing up; they are not my play toys.  And I think that must be how we are to God--we are individuals, growing up, capable of making our own choices, and sometimes choosing to do and say things that must grieve the heart of God.  Ouch.  What a lesson.

So, I am finding myself in those between years.  I still feel, in my heart, like the young woman I once was.  But I look like an old lady who couldn't possibly understand life as a "young person" does today.  And yet, I am still my own mother's daughter. I am certainly not ready for those roles to reverse!  But it is all very strange. I am at this odd point in life where my mother knows better than me (hasn't she always, really?) and my adult children are also smarter than I am.  I am just the one in the middle who apparently has lost all good sense.

My mother isn't "old-fashioned" because she is a cool old lady.  I am the uncool, conservative, high-standards, modest, separate-from-the-world old wet rag.  And here I thought all these wonderful biblical principles God had shown me I would pass on to the next generation and they would rise above our heathen world and make a difference!  And now, alas, they just see me as this middle-aged fuddy-duddy, like I used to see anyone over 40 when I was in my twenties!  [Hey!  It's not about *me* being right!! It's about *God* being right!!  Do it *God's* way!  Please don't start playing footsies with the world and class me with all old fogeys!  I love you!  I want what's best for you!  Is anyone listening????!!!!]

Why am I so tired all the time?  Why is all my hair falling out? How did I get to be this size?  Why am I getting plumper and plumper, try as I might to eat less and tone more.  So, I begin to resign myself to a role that I never, ever thought I would fill.  That of the middle ager. Ugh.  And yet, I am still the mother of a Kindergartner!!  Life flows on, I get older, my firstborns turn into adults, and yet I still need to be that 24 year old mom I was so long ago.  Whew.

I am grateful for what I now know.  For things I've learned by experience.  But at the same time, it does grate on me that if I do things differently with my current younger children I am scorned as some sort of hypocrite. ("You would never have let us do that!") What I did with my olders was the right thing at the time.  And I wish I could do things with my youngers *just the same*.  But I can't.  Life is different.  They have lots of older siblings in the home.  They are exposed to so many things my older ones didn't know about till they were much older.  They have an old woman for a mom, too.  They also have a mom: 1)who has learned to let Dad be the head (which means some things will be allowed that I used to not allow), 2) who has gotten so that reading is a challenge due to my changing eyesight (which means I don't do as much read-aloud as I used to, and I don't enjoy it as much myself); 3) who has learned a thing or two about child training and obedience (which means I'm not as "nice" as I once was, perhaps); 4) who is more mature in her relationship with the Lord and has learned that she is *not* the general manager of the universe (which means I am quietly resigned to certain things that I used to have a hissy fit about); etc.  Same mom, different mom.

So I find myself in this personality crisis.  Who am I?  I know the younger moms at church see me as "Mrs. F____".  They want to be respectful, ya know. They never call me by my first name! But yet the moms with kids who are now grown and independent see me as a weirdo because I still have all these little children connected to me.  They have some younger children around, too--their grandchildren!

What am I trying to say?  This is just another one of those getting older things that nobody tells you about.  I mean, we have all heard of the "mid-life crisis".  Well, I am here to tell you that it is real!  So much to do, so little time. Asking yourself, have I made a difference?  Have I reared my children right?  Then it is ok that they are turning out differently from what I expected?  How do others perceive me?  Am I helpful to other moms?  Am I a good role model?  Or am I just a cranky pre-menopausal old lady to be pitied?

I guess the hardest thing about all this is knowing what I want me to be, and yet I am not that.  For if I were, I would be getting different responses from my family. All I can say is, "Lord, make me who You want me to be," realizing that that may not be what anyone really *likes* but what is best for me to be in my role as mom.