We need to get back in tune to the music soundtrack of our lives. We must remember the importance of our own personal soulquake story where we found our way to the other side.
During our children’s teen years and our own mid-life chapter, we are giving birth to something greater than we realize. We need to remember the arc of our own life story, and how our story has a clear beginning, middle, and end. Our story will end before we realize it, so it is time we become in tune to what truly matters in life, the greater calling placed on our lives and the relationships with those around us.
What does the heartbeat of your home sound like?
We all want our homes to sound like the echoes of laughter, a gentle breeze, and the pitter-patter of feet running toward us. We desire to feel the calmness of a warm embrace, moving together side-by-side and face-to-face with support and encouragement. However, when we listen to the heartbeat of our home, we may sometimes hear closed doors, steps walking away, and voices arguing. During the teen years of our children’s lives and our own mid-life, we sense more emotional frustration and disappointment in our home. We feel ourselves being stretched in different directions, but that is part of inner growth and learning who we are. Growing does not always feel comfortable, but it is during these seasons of life when we can become the safest landing place for both our teens and our spouses. Like a plane that safely lands after a long flight, we can be that landing place for each other. We can provide loving homes where we can all learn to navigate life’s challenges and our own difficult emotions in healthier ways while receiving love, acceptance, care, and the attention we all need.
We all need a safe landing place, and we need to quiet ourselves enough to listen closely to the heartbeat of our home.
In each season of life, the heartbeat of our home sounds differently. There are different versions of ourselves and of our children during past seasons of life, and we may still be holding on to those versions even now in our mid-life. We need to realize that life has changed– we aren’t the same anymore, and our children aren’t either. Our families change in mid-life, and we are changing too with shifting roles. As we grieve the older versions of ourselves and our children in our homes, we can find peace and rest in our relationships with each other, knowing that this is all part of the plan. God created us to go through these different seasons of our lives so that we would grow in our character and produce lasting fruit in our lives. Our homes will not always sound in perfect harmony because life is messy, relationships take work, and we don’t always know how to communicate effectively with each other.
We can rest in the truth that even the imperfect moments of growth can be made beautiful. Peace and calmness can enter our homes while chaos and strife are exhaled and let go. There can be restoration to the broken areas of our home lives that are no longer serving us. A broken vase can still be made whole, and the pieces of the puzzle can come together. There can be wisdom after disappointment, knowing that everything will work out the way it is meant to be. There can be love and self-acceptance after failure, knowing that who we are is not what we achieve. There can be tears and a sense of meaning after loss, realizing that grief too is part of the beauty in life. There can be restoration, acceptance, and healing in our homes.
Heart first—love can blossom into becoming the heartbeat of our homes.
In our mid-life years, we need to get back in tune with the music of our own personal inner life. As we get older, we may close doors that are meant to stay open while forgetting what the music of life sounds like. In mid-life, life’s music can feel muffled and blocked out when we feel held back. At times, it can feel as if we are standing behind a heavy closed door, hearing stifled music from another room that we can’t quite make out. The music plays on, the door remains too hard to push, and we are tempted to walk away, not wanting to go through the struggle of opening that door again in our lives. However, we need to go through the process of opening that door. We can take risks, get back to our creativity, and make an intentional effort to start prioritizing what actually matters to us. We may not want to feel the intensity of our own human emotions because it can be difficult experiencing loss, disappointment, and grief that we may have pushed away. However, we can work through our own emotions through the creative process whether that is with art, music, or writing.
It is time that we allow ourselves to experience our own emotions in healthier ways while experiencing restoration in our homes. Creativity and our spiritual inner life can be reprioritized, and we can become in tune again to the personal soundtrack of our lives. We can return to what brought us joy whether that is with playing music, being outside in nature, creating art, being in a community, moving our bodies, or writing. It is the process of creativity that makes us human, allowing us to feel things we have not felt in years. We can reconnect to our inner spiritual lives, and the weakest parts of ourselves can be strengthened by God. We can have inward spiritual renewal, return to our faith, stay in tune to life’s music, and become the safest landing place for each other.