No Cutoff for Joy

My birthday reflection

Today I turn forty-seven, and I’ve lived a lot of lives to get here.

A Cancer, born under water and the moon, which has always felt about right. Water signs feel everything all the way down, and I do. Maybe that’s why I’ve always been the one who holds things. Holds people. Feels the energy in a room. Allows my intuition to surprise and guide me. Forty-seven years of learning what my heart can carry.

There was a time I was going to be a Christian artist for the rest of my life. I did that. Then doors opened and I was going to be a pastor for the rest of my life. I did that too. Every time, I was certain I’d found the shape my one life would take. Every time, a door closed and another opened, and I walked through it. Nonprofit leader. Prison outreach. Social media manager. Dance mom. I gave myself fully to all of them.

Here’s what I’m only now learning to say plainly: none of those lives replaced the one before it. They widened me. I didn’t stop being a minister when I stepped off the stage. I didn’t stop being a pastor when I left the church. I’m wide enough now to carry all of it, and the carrying is the gift.

There was another time, these last few years, when I poured most of myself into my family. Into parenting well. Into helping my daughter tend a beautiful budding career. I knew it was a season, that it wouldn’t last forever, and I gave myself to it fully anyway. I don’t regret a single hour. But somewhere in the pouring I set down a lot of my own wanting, and what surprises me now, really what delights me, is watching it all come back. The writing. The music I’m not done with. A whole career in social media I wouldn’t have dared to dream ten years ago, work I’m passionate about, work that helps people, work that pays. I wouldn’t have believed you if you’d told me.

So here’s what I want to say out loud on my birthday, as much to myself as to anyone reading.

There’s no cutoff for joy. There’s no cutoff for dreaming.

Forty-seven isn’t too old to want new things, to start a whole new dream, and lean all the way into it. It’s also not too old for the small givings: a dance party in the kitchen, more pickleball, a movie with a friend, a concert, an afternoon of unhurried rest. Give yourself fully to the work. And leave room for play, for friendship, for the things that hand something back to you.

I want to share one more thing that has cost me something in the learning. I’ve been hurt by scarcity. By people who hold their doors shut, who guard what they have as if there won’t be enough. It’s grieved me more than I usually admit. And still, the choice I want to keep making is the abundant one. When a door opens for me, I want my first question to be: Who else can I bring along? Generous with my time, my spirit, and the room I’m standing in. I’m not always good at it. But it’s the only way I want to live.

I now also know that not everyone’s baseline is joy. My own son reminded me of that, and I haven’t forgotten it. The people I love most don’t all share this disposition, and their days can look very different from mine because of it. So I’ve stopped counting my joy as privilege. I count it as task. A joyful responsibility to hold, and to hand out wherever I can. If joy comes to me more easily, I don’t get to hoard it. I get to spread it. That’s the work I left the church to keep doing, in collaboration, out loud, with my doors open.

I know this is a heightened moment, and heightened moments don’t last, and I’m not asking this one to. I only want to soak it in while it’s here. If any of it travels to your life, take it. If it doesn’t fit, set it down.

If there’s one blanket statement I’ll lay over all of us, it’s this.

We are magical. We are worthy. We are deserving of love. We are connected and responsible to one another in ways each of us has to keep figuring out.

Past that, we’re gloriously, wildly different. And that difference is the gift. It’s the whole reason to extend a hand, to extend a heart, to lean in. We’re better for each other when we do.

My wish today is for more of what’s already begun. More writing. More singing. More trusting of this flow that keeps carrying me somewhere I didn’t plan and wouldn’t trade for anything.

Life is precious. We don’t get to know how long it runs. So I’m going to live fully today. Take a risk today. Stand up for what I believe today. Savor it today.

Forty-seven years in, that’s still the whole ethos.

Still testifying to the good, Melissa