2025, my human age finally caught up with my (old) soul age. That in turning forty this year, there’s also a new kind of oldie-goldie magic I now fully live in.
I was probably forty since I was four. I never remembered being a child and I don’t say this in an outright oppressive way, I had very loving grandparents raising me.
I say this as part of history, or a cultural era, where being the eldest (or only) daughter is in and of itself soul-crushing whether or not you were told of it, you felt it.
A bit of a longer year end post as far as forty being a milestone inflection point in life goes.
In May, I attended a trauma-informed leadership conference in Oxford that was refreshing gaining language to more effectively grow in leadership at work, especially as a “millennial mother”. That I have found social media a dreadful place if not trauma-informed. And it is worth a separate post about The Narcissism Wounding that marked a generation, where I have compassion for men in all these, as my dad lived with Cluster B personality disorders.
But just as much, I’m seeing turning forty or the forties have brought respite for many who have done trauma-informed work to finally breakthrough it like a catharsis. Even if painful.
Decentering Marriage
That marriage was never quite a real choice, such nuances are not easily understood. From our mothers to our pastors’ wives, it was like blind-siding of sorts (especially in evangelical circles, and how it plays, or performs, out on social media as a dark force to reckon with).
When I left the dream job in 2017 for my marriage to supposedly thrive, as my partner was in a deeply unfulfilled place in his life (that would continue for the next 7 years until 2025), we were in evangelical circles where tradwife complementarianism was held as The Ideal — it presents an overarching responsibility on women for their partners’ fulfillment. What I hadn’t known was, my parents’ unfulfilling marriage fueled a co-dependency in looking to a supposed evangelical way of marriage as The Path to fulfillment. Only to lose my way.
It wasn’t an overnight crash-and-burn but a slow abyss spiral. Steering you (your true self and choices) away from The One who is ultimately the most or only fulfilling to our souls — and the ironic familiarity of a trauma-bonding when modeled in our families of origin.
‘What if he is never fulfilled? Never content? Never happy?’ The many nights, I pondered.
That would frame my thirties. Moving 7 times this decade seeking the happy ending. By 2019, as I awakened to idolatries in evangelicalism, I deeply questioned if leaving the dream job was a mistake, like leaving a place where Grace held me. Last year, I wrote about 2019 to 2023 being like a deep Spring Cleaning and what I learned deep in the dark nights.
Fuller Seminary Professor Kutter Callaway’s insightful book “Breaking the Marriage Idol: Reconstructing Our Cultural and Spiritual Norms” is an essential spiritual formation read.
Amidst the dark night of the soul, a Christmas trip with my two young children in 2022 as I battled chronic illnesses that saw a surgery to remove my gallbladder literally saved my life.
Christmas 2022: Grief and Grace
For half of my thirties, from 2017 to 2022, in working and living in a version like a deep denial or abandon of self(-worth), my body carried a grief of a loss, and of unrelenting spirals that weren’t mine to (carry to) begin with. The body stores these trauma, I learned now. Yet this is all familiar or norm to the eldest daughter in dysfunctional family systems.
Then came Christmas 2022. The miracle ease of traveling with my then 2.5-year-old and 10-month-old across the country to Chicago and then driving to Canada, I finally see, as I wrote in my 2022 year end post where it all started.
The majesty of His Grace and mercies met me at that majestic falls. At my very end, in the depth of impossibles, I beheld the Lord of my youth and who(se) I am for the first time in a very long time. Alas, since 2023, I let the tension broke, to let go to no longer live in it.
No longer the fixer, the rescuer. But to fall in Grace, in chaos and confusion, and be found.
The work on decentering marriage is but putting marriage in a truly healthy place for all to flourish in its intended purpose, or better yet, to reconsider its rightful role in this journey of life here, not at all higher-than-thou, just as Jesus famously said it is better to not marry.
And spoiler: it’s not about gender roles either. So not to say it’s all doom and gloom, but it shouldn’t at all be surprising, and maybe a big generalization, but by good’ol forty, no one is truly thriving or flourishing. Or living single-mindedly for the One Thing? The first love.
There. Are. Too. Many. Things.
Where does that leave us?
“My favorite thing about marriage is the safe place it provides to be vulnerable. Marriage is messy. It’s not always romantic, and it can often feel disappointing. I’ve learned that I need to let go of the idealism that crushes the joy of my reality. And here’s the thing, and I feel like it’s really important to say, social media is a place that feeds the idealism that we need to let go of. When I post a picture of John Mark and I hugging on social media, it looks like we’re the perfect couple, that we have no problems, that it’s just ideal. But it feeds into a narrative that’s not only not true, but is also, I think, damaging.” — Tammy Comer in The Marriage Myth
I have found such a reality reframing very helpful by John Mark and Tammy Comer’s sharing on their podcast, The Marriage Myth, having deeply lived this reality, do listen. Goes without saying it has also shaped how I regard and use social media these few years.
“For Jesus, marriage is companionate, not passionate. My therapist calls it old person love, where you see Jesus behind the veneer and the sin and the flaw and the humanity of another person — and you see Jesus rather than your ideals, your fantasies [that] will do nothing but dehumanize them, and demoralize you. But they can be a companion for the spiritual journey as your soul makes its way back to union with God and along that road is transformed into a person of agape. Finally, last thought, marriage is not the be all end all.” — John Mark Comer in The Marriage Myth
Leaning into healthy ‘old people love‘ sums up my 2025 well. I really relish where I am at.
To locate the choice to marry as but part of one’s deep spiritual formation only if — big If — both parties are willing to navigate the vulnerability and a love as such. Rarely, is it truly the burden of aging or of ‘the little kids trenches season’ so to speak. (Cues: Grey Divorce)
I learned in therapy it’s the shadow sides like the enabling, supplying, and co-dependencies.
On Repeat: rupture and repair
My partner is slow-finding fulfillment in ways we hadn’t known or expected; he was led to a new job early this year in Seattle, where I also moved to with the two littles. It is a bit of a new era to be navigating such a decentering as I continue the work on being all of who He made me, be seen for who I am or finding voice for the first time after a decade, is sobering.
But all is well. That has also been three good years learning the art of rupture-and-repair:
- 2023 Rebirth: Rekindled with my first love in new faith communities I describe as orthodox in spiritual formation and a deep deconstruction into evangelicalism and redefining missional as any individual’s call than ‘coupled’.
- 2024 Repair: Recentered in Grace’s sufficiency to do-it-all like a defiant, rested re-pursuit of the dream job or “work identity”, separated from ‘the home’, and still love Marie Kondo-ed homemaking and raising my children.
- 2025 Reset: Returned fully to an unapologetic life on the road (I love solo travels with le kiddos) to see old friends around the world whose friendship histories from days of our youth speak life into the ‘self’ I had forgotten.
I had started solo-traveling again in 2023. In 2025, I traveled to Europe, Australia and Asia, where several of my good’ol friends shared they didn’t expect how I lost my way — neither did I. Yet in just as much, apostle Paul had called it in 1 Peter and a life verse of mine in The Message: “Your life is a journey you must travel with a deep consciousness of God.”
2025 was a rollercoaster ride of emotions of every kind. If you have followed my journey in recent years of my dark night, it was like the five stages of grief since the dark night of 2022 beginning from denial then anger in 2023 then bargaining in 2024, and ah, comes the deep sorrow of 2025. But may I take heart that 2026 could likely be a completion in acceptance.
After all, it began with radical acceptance — of everything I had not seen but now I see.
In 2015, I entered my thirties in wide-eyed wonder but entering my forties this year with eyes wide opened. If I were to sum up my thirties and turning forty in 2025 in three words: Deeper Into Grace.
Many days in 2025 felt a step forward and two step back. Questioning everything while in deep joy, cautiously rebuilding from the ruins. If there were tears, they were in compassion.
That this heart is going into 2026 warm, and well-centered in Grace abundant, here I am.
honest & hygge 