BRISALO

Brennan Manning wrote that many people between 30 and 60, whatever their stature or achievements, undergo what can truly be called a second journey. It begins, he said, when we cannot live the afternoon of life according to the morning program.

I read that around my 40th Birthday.

A week from today, I turn 49.

I love my birthday. I always have. It’s the one day a year I get to celebrate myself without apology — throw the confetti, eat the cake, live exactly how I want. No permission slips needed.

But this birthday feels different. Because I think I’m closing a season that lasted far longer than a year.

Not gonna lie, it’s been hard for a while now.

Losing Finn. A divorce. Dear friends dying of cancer. Multiple moves. Fifteen years away, and then a return to the state I call home — four years ago now, and if I’m honest, I still feel as disheveled and lost as ever. Two jobs lost to workforce reductions — not one, but two. The kind of hard that knocks the breath out of you. The kind that doesn’t announce itself and leave; it just settles in and stays a while.

I followed the morning program faithfully through all of it. The titles, the proving, the performing, the holding-it-together.

And somewhere inside those years, quietly, something else was taking root.

I launched Brisalo. I launched Faralo. I started writing to you every other Sunday(ish). I began saying things out loud that I used to only think. I’m embracing my voice — not the one that says what the room wants to hear, but the one that’s been in there all along, waiting for the afternoon.

Even my quiet time has been part of the discovering. One of my besties gave me Ruth Chou Simmons’ The Way of the Wildflower — as a birthday gift, and what a gift it’s been. We walked through a study on Queen Esther together, then I sat a bit in Philippians, and now I’m diving into this book alongside her. A wildflower doesn’t perform. It doesn’t hold it together. It just grows where it’s planted — sometimes disheveled, sometimes lost-looking, and blooming anyway. As those seeds were planted long ago, they are finally taking root. I’m learning from that.

I know this may seem random – but stay with me. I’d be remiss not to include the World Cup.

I have loved every minute of it. So much joy. Moment after moment after moment — I wish we could host this thing every single year.  DREAMY. 

The Norwegian fans lining up and rowing like they’re crewing a Viking ship. The Scots outdrinking Boston — Boston. The Dutch and their “if you’re not Dutch, you’re not much.” The Mexicans. The Spaniards. Cucho’s goal. Messi’s hat trick.

But my favorite thing wasn’t a goal.

It was watching Americans defy every ugly story the media told about us — all that bullshit we hear and watch every day — and welcome the entire world home. Flags everywhere. Strangers hugging in the streets. People who don’t share a language sharing a song and dancing in the street. Footloose would be proud.

Which makes me wonder what would happen if we defied the ugly stories we tell about ourselves. Because we do. All that bullshit, too.

Turns out home isn’t a place you arrive at. It’s something you make room for someone else in.

Even if that home is just you.

Because you are home.

Which, come to think of it, is a pretty good description of what I want the afternoon of my life to be about.

So, here’s how I’ll spend my 49th birthday: on a glass-dome train, moving from the mountains of Alaska down to the sea.

I didn’t plan the timing or the symbolism. But I can’t unfeel it now.

The mountains have always brought me peace. Two years of living in Colorado gave me some of my favorite memories of my life. The Cascades of Oregon and Washington. The Smokies of Tennessee, the Blue Ridges of North Carolina — I sit in front of them and go speechless with awe and wonder. 

And the water heals me. Lakes, rivers, oceans — I breathe in that air and feel, for the first time in a long time, like I’ve actually exhaled.

Peace, then healing. Mountains, then sea. That’s the whole arc of a second journey, and I get to ride straight through it on the morning I turn 49.

Here’s what no one tells you: the second journey doesn’t start with a plan. It starts with a pause. A moment when the old program stops working (if it ever did) and you get quiet enough to ask — who am I, underneath all of it?

You don’t have to answer today. 

Just pause with it.

And if you’ve been holding your breath through a long, hard season — consider this your permission to exhale.

Big Hugs and A Lotta Love,

Stacy