To Dream Again

Deanna Bartalini

Editor's note: Today, we welcome a new friend and contributor to our CatholicMom.com family. Deanna Bartalini is a wife and mom of two adult children, as well as a religious educator and the blogger behind the great blog Notlukewarm. Since Deanna and I share the same birth year, I'm really looking forward to learning from her writing! Please join me in warmly welcoming her! LMH

To Dream Again

This year is a very important year for me as well as the other approximately four million people who were born in 1963.  Ah yes, we will all hit the half century mark, enter the second half of our lives, begin the slide down the hill, basically, we turn FIFTY! My parents are celebrating fifty years of marriage, while my husband and I celebrate thirty.  It’s a big year.

A big year that actually began when I turned the calendar page to December 2012 and realized I would soon be entering my fiftieth year.  And so here I sit, on the cusp, the brink, in that liminal space poised and ready.  For what?  What happens next?  I have no plan.  And, if you are close to me in age, you may very well be in the same place.  Or not.  My friends frequently tell me “now is your time” and are slightly envious of my “time.”  I had my children early in our marriage so that we would be young when they left the nest.  And we are.  My plan was that now we would have all the fun we didn’t when we were younger.  Well, plans don’t always work out.  I do have time to do what I want, but often find myself at loose ends trying to figure it out.

To Dream Again

So this year I have decided to DREAM again and come up with a plan for the next few years of my life;  though with the longevity on both sides of my family, it might be close to another fifty years.  As a wife and mother most of the time I spent my time thinking about and doing for others.  And at that time and place it was the right thing to do and there is no regret.  Now though, I can focus on myself and that is very different and difficult for me.  I am not having a mid-life crisis and am not running out and buying a sports car or getting rid of my husband, but rather I have decided to take stock and ask myself who I am and what I want to happen in my life.

I have always loved and tried to live my life by this quote from Revelation 3:16 “So, because you are lukewarm, neither hot nor cold, I will spit you out of my mouth”.  The thought of being spit out of Jesus’ mouth is pretty graphic and so my life’s work is to be “notlukewarm”. It is my email address, the title of my blog, and my life’s motto.

In this, my fiftieth year, I will DREAM; I will be NOTLUKEWARM about my life, my faith, my family and my friends.  Are you coming with me?

Copyright 2013 Deanna Bartalini