Hey friend.

Lots of younger people write “20 things I’ve learned in 20 years” or “40 things in 40 years.” When you get to 66, the lists get long. The older you get, the less confident you are about what you have actually learned.

With Rich writing on Wednesdays, I’ll write my birthday post a day early. I’ll tell you six things I’m reasonably confident that I’ve observed.

1. Most of the things I worried would happen haven’t. (What I anticipated negative consequences for or allowed to affect my appreciation of the moment I’m in.)

2. Most of the things that have happened, I didn’t worry about or anticipate. (Pastoring, chaplaining, dadding, grandpaing, resigning a job with no job at 57 years-old, deciding while on a walk before dating that I wanted to marry Nancy.)

3. I significantly underestimate the implications of the things I just do. Recently, I started running regularly. I don’t feel different. But I think I feel different. Just because of the doing.

4. I underappreciate Nancy. I mean, I try to remember to say thank you (though she’s better at it than I am). But after more than 41 years married, and 42 of my birthdays together, I undervalue the ways that she’s formed me and we’ve formed us. We’re beginning, finally, to be able to say, “forget what people think is supposed to happen. This is what we enjoy.”

5. There are many things I don’t need to apologize to myself for not accomplishing.

6. The most important part of the end of Matthew 28 is not how hard I work at measuring up to making disciples. The most important part is that Jesus told people who were going to get sick and die and feel incompetent that he was with them always, even to the end of time.