The Midlife Realization Nobody Talks About

Have you ever caught yourself doing the math?

Someone casually says, "Thirty years from now," and before you even realize it, your mind is calculating how old you'll be.

If so, you're not alone.

In this episode of Loving That Midlife, Lori explores a midlife realization that almost no one talks about: the moment when aging stops being an idea and starts feeling personal.

This isn't an episode about fearing death or dreading getting older. It's about the surprising shift that happens in midlife when we become more aware that our days are finite—and how that awareness can actually lead us to live with greater gratitude, wisdom, and intention.

In this episode, you'll discover:

• Why this realization often seems to arrive "all at once"
• The difference between knowing you're aging and truly feeling it
• Why this experience isn't vanity—it's part of being human
• What the ancient practice of memento mori can teach us about living well
• How Psalm 90's invitation to "number our days" changes the way we experience today
• The hope Christians have because Jesus has defeated sin, death, and the devil

If you've ever looked in the mirror and wondered where the years went, or found yourself unexpectedly grieving the loss of your youth, this conversation will remind you that you're not alone—and that perhaps this season isn't about fearing the future, but waking up to the gift of the present.

Because maybe the goal isn't to stop noticing that our days are numbered.

Maybe the goal is to let that awareness teach us just how precious today really is.

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Email: lori@loribuckcoaching.com

Transcript

SPEAKER_00 0:05

Hello, friend, and welcome back to Loving That Midlife. I'm Lori Buck, Master Certified Christian Life Coach, and I'm so glad you're here. Over the past few episodes, we've been talking about loneliness, rediscovering what you want, and how our marriages change in midlife. But today, I want to talk about something that has surprised me even more than any of those topics. It's not really something anyone warned me about. It's not something I remember reading about. And honestly, I'm not even sure I had words for it until recently. So if you found yourself feeling a little more emotional lately or a little more reflective, or maybe you've had a few thoughts that seem to come out of nowhere and you don't really like them, I hope this episode helps you realize you're not alone. So let me set up this scenario. Have you ever had one of those moments where something reminded you how old you'll be in X number of years? Maybe someone casually says, 30 years from now, and before you even realize it, your brain starts doing the math. 30 years from now, I'll be 83. My dad's 83 this year, and his mom made it well past 83, and so did my other grandmother. So maybe I'll still be here then. Has that ever happened to you? Because lately it's been happening to me more than I'd like to admit. Or here's another one. Maybe you've looked in the mirror and thought, when did this happen? Not because you suddenly have wrinkles or gray hair, not because your body has suddenly changed, but because something inside your brain finally realizes time is passing. I'm older than I expected. I don't know exactly when it happened, but somewhere along the way, a switch kind of just flipped for me. And honestly, I don't love it. For years I've had little reminders I was getting older, but they never stuck in my brain, which shouldn't surprise anyone who knows me. I could always shake them off. And then all of a sudden, recently, I just couldn't anymore. And I have a feeling I'm not the only one. Funny story. I remember when I was a teenager, I would watch my mom get ready, and she would say that sometimes when she looked in the mirror, she would see her mother looking back at her. And then she would turn around and pull her hair straight back as if I could see it myself. And I remember thinking this was so funny because she was distressed about it. My granny was old, and my mom was old, but not that old. But I could kind of see it. I understood what she meant intellectually, of course, but I could not imagine ever feeling that way myself. And then she'd tell me a story about her big mama, her grandmother. And her big mama used to say, Honey, in my heart, I still feel like a young girl, but when I look in the mirror, I see an old lady looking back at me. And of course, my mother thought that was hilarious herself. But she said she now understands what Big Mama meant. Honestly, I think my mom was trying to prepare me for something she couldn't really vocalize at the time. She wanted me to know that getting older doesn't mean you suddenly stop feeling like yourself. There's this strange disconnect between who you know yourself to be on the inside and what the mirror is telling you on the outside. I tuck those conversations away somewhere in the back of my mind and then just didn't think about them. But one day, not that long ago, I understood exactly what she meant. Not because I thought I suddenly looked old, but because I realized I'd spent my whole life feeling young. I have always felt young. Maybe it's because I'm really short. I'm only 5'1, if you don't know me in real life. And honestly, I have freckles, which now I say just look like age spots, but I've always just kind of look younger than my age. And maybe it's also because every work situation I was in, I was always the youngest. Or maybe it's just that the youngest version of ourselves never really leaves us. I don't know. But what I realized recently is that I've quietly assumed I'd always feel that way. Until one day when I didn't. And what's interesting is that, of course, didn't happen all at once. Looking back, there were little reminders over the years. I remember coming to terms with my body after having children. The stretch marks, the c-section scar, and the ugly shelf under the C-section scar, the sagging, everything. It wasn't the body I had in my early 20s anymore. But honestly, every change felt like a very small price to pay for my three beautiful children. It's just never bothered me that much. I didn't sit around grieving it. And then I remember when I was about 34, one day looking in the mirror and thinking, wow, my skin is different. It looks like it changed overnight. It was one of those strange moments where you kind of wonder if you're imagining it. But then I shrugged and went on with my life. At that age, I had three small children. I didn't have time to sit around looking in the mirror, worrying about my skin. Then as I got older, the normal aches and pains came, little injuries, my not so great great toe that eventually developed arthritis. You know, the things that just happen when you've lived in a body for a while. Oh, and then I found my first gray hair in my mid-40s. I was so proud of that. Jeff Buck started going gray at 25, and I did not get my first gray until about 20 years later. But now I see so many of them. But none of those things really made me feel old. They just felt like life again until recently. A few weeks ago, I got one of those mailers from the arthritis foundation. My oldest daughter picked it up and dramatically read the quote on the front, which said, Someone you know is suffering from arthritis. And she laughed and said, Hey, mom, it's you. I had brought the mail in and I had seen that coming. So I just said, It's me. Hi, I'm the problem, it's me. And we all laughed, of course, because it was kind of funny. But later that day, I realized why it stayed with me. It wasn't about the arthritis. It wasn't even about my big toe. It represented something much bigger than that. For the first time in my life, I feel like I'm not just noticing little signs of aging, I'm becoming more aware, and not just intellectually, that my life is finite. And that's a very different realization. And if I'm being completely honest, I've had a few intrusive thoughts about it ever since. Someone mentions 30 years from now, and my brain immediately thinks, will I still be alive? Will I still be healthy? Will my parents still be here? I already know the answer to that question. My dad's 83 now. Will I still be able to travel? Will I know my grandchildren someday? I don't like that my brain goes there. In fact, I almost didn't record this episode because I thought this sounds like such a Debbie Downer episode. And on the flip side of that, maybe it's just a little vain. I have so much to be grateful for. My parents are still alive and healthy. So are my in-laws. My children are all thriving. Jeff and I just celebrated 30 years of marriage, and I can truly say that I love him more today than I did the day I said I do. God has been incredibly generous and faithful to me. So why should I be sad about getting older? But the more I've sat with it, the more I've realized I don't think this is vanity. I think it's something much more universal. And I think it's a realization that almost every woman and every person for that matter reaches at some point in midlife. And as I've been sitting with all of this over the last few weeks, or actually now, probably the last few months, I kept asking myself one question. What changed? Because if I'm honest, my body didn't suddenly change. I've been aging my entire life. My skin didn't change overnight. My toe didn't suddenly decide to have arthritis. My parents didn't suddenly become older. Those things have all been happening slowly now for years. So why did it suddenly feel different? And I think I finally figured it out. The change wasn't in my body. The change was in my mind, in my awareness. For years I've known I was getting older. We all do. But now I feel it. And those are two very different things. As a retired classical homeschooling mom, I've known the Latin phrase memento mori for years. Remember that you must die. I knew the history. I thought the artwork was fascinating. You know, the painting of St. Jerome in a red robe while he's writing the Latin Bible with a skull on his desk next to him. Those skulls, although kind of creepy or macabre, were meant to remind people life was temporary. It was interesting to me, intellectually as well as theologically. But somewhere in the last year, I stopped understanding Memento Mori with my head and started feeling it in my heart. And I don't think I'm alone. I think there comes a point in midlife when we stop thinking death is something that happens to old people or to other people, and we quietly realize one day that'll happen to me. I'm not gonna lie, that realization can feel unsettling. Our brains don't like it. Our brains like certainty and control. Our brains like believing we have all the time in the world. So when our awareness catches up with reality, our brains naturally begin asking questions. How much time do I have left? Will I be healthy? Will I see my grandchildren grow up? Will I still be able to travel? Will I have enough money? Will I have my mind? How much worse will this stupid toe get before I can't walk on it anymore? But maybe that's just one I'm asking. And friends, those questions aren't evidence that something has gone wrong. They're just evidence that we're human. And as I've been wrestling with these thoughts, one verse has kept coming back to me over and over. Psalm 90 says, teach us to number our days that we may gain a heart of wisdom. I read that verse many times, and I can hardly read it without being brought to tears. But I've also noticed something recently it doesn't say teach us to fear our days or teach us to ignore our days, or even teach us to pretend our days are innumerable. It says teach us to number them. Why? Because when we remember our days are a gift, we begin to spend them differently. I've also thought a lot about Ash Wednesday recently. Every year, while my pastor places the ashes on my forehead, he says, From dust you came into dust you shall return. Jesus is your only hope. Those words have always been meaningful. But now thinking about them, they feel a little different. Because I'm not just hearing them or feeling them temporarily, but I'm starting to feel them in my soul. From dust, you came to dust, you shall return. That isn't meant to frighten us. It's meant to remind us of something even greater than this life. That Jesus is our only hope for eternal life. Obviously, not because Christians somehow avoid aging, and not because believers don't experience grief, and not because death isn't real, but because Christ has already defeated sin, death, and the devil. Death is still an enemy in the here and now, but it isn't the final word. And I can't tell you how much comfort there is in that. There's another quote I've been thinking a lot about lately, and this one's from G.K. Chesterton. It's actually stayed with me for years since the first time I heard it. He writes, We have sinned and grown old, and our father is younger than we. Chesterton imagines God delighting in every sunrise, every moonrise, every daisy he's ever made, as if he never gets tired of saying, Do it again. And the older I get, the more I love that thought. Because while my body is aging, God's joy never does. His delight never grows old. His hope never grows tired. And maybe that's why, even now, I still feel young somewhere deep inside my soul. Because the deepest part of me belongs to the God whose joy never ages. I don't think the problem is that I'm becoming more aware of my immortality. The problem is that I thought awareness itself was something to fear. But maybe it isn't. Maybe this realization isn't here to steal my joy. Maybe it's here to sharpen it. Maybe it's reminding me not to assume I'll always have another summer, another vacation, another conversation with my parents, another ordinary Tuesday where I get to eat dinner with my husband and daughter. Maybe that is why Moses prayed. Teach us to number our days. Because numbering our days isn't about obsessing over how many we have left. It's about learning how precious today, this day really is. And I don't think that's a lesson reserved for people in their 80s. I think it's one of the gifts and yes, one of the challenges of midlife. When we finally realize life is finite, we're invited to live it more intentionally than ever before. So, what's mid about the midlife this week? Well, I think I've already mentioned it: looking in the mirror and seeing your mother staring back at you. But here's the funny thing. That seems to go the other way too in my family. My daughters love to look back through old photos of me from college and when I was first married. I think my youngest especially gets a kick out of seeing what I looked like when I was her age. There are even a couple of pictures she saved on her phone because they're her favorites. But here's the funny part. Her older sister has been my doppelganger since she was about 10 years old. People have called her my mini-me for years. And honestly, they're not wrong. She definitely has some of her daddy in her, especially her personality and the way her brain works. But when I look at pictures of myself from my senior year of college or on my honeymoon, it's almost startling how much she looks like I did then. We have all known and seen this for years. But the other day, one of my book club friends met my youngest daughter for the first time and told her how much she looks like me. That's a new one because honestly, she is a really good mix of me and her father. But the older she gets, the more I see a little more of myself in her. And honestly, every single time someone tells me that my daughters look like me, I take that as one of the greatest compliments I could receive because they are both beautiful inside and out. But then I catch myself thinking, one day, they're probably going to look in the mirror and see me looking back at them and maybe even see their grandmother, just like I do now. I've always had my mom's eyes, so I've seen little glimpses of her for years. But lately, I see more than just her eyes. Sometimes I catch a glimpse of my mom. Sometimes I even see my granny, that precious face I haven't seen in over 15 years. And if I'm honest, it's equal parts comforting and unsettling. Comforting because these women shaped me. Their lives became part of mine. Their faces became part of mine. Their stories are part of me too. And unsettling because it reminds me just how quickly this happened. I can still see my mom looking in that mirror when I was in high school, like it happened yesterday. And that was decades ago. And in two more decades, I'm sure my daughters will probably be having this exact same realization. And it will feel like hardly any time at all has passed. Five generations of women in my family have had this conversation. My mother's big mama tried to prepare my granny and my mother. My mom tried to prepare me. And now I guess I'm trying to prepare my girls, which is good and right. Because the goal isn't to stop aging or to stop noticing that our days are numbered. Maybe the goal is to let that awareness teach us just how precious today really is. And next week, we're gonna talk about what we do once we have that realization. Well, friends, that's all I've got for you this week. If these conversations have been stirring something up in you, if you're realizing you've been moving through life on autopilot, or you've got questions you don't quite know how to answer, that's exactly the kind of work we do in coaching. Coaching isn't about fixing you, it's about helping you become more awake to your own life so you can live this season with greater intention, peace, and joy instead of simply reacting to your life. If you'd like to learn more about working together, I'd love to connect with you. You can find me on social media at Loribuck Coaching or at my website, Loribuckcoaching.com. That's L-O-R-I B-U-C-K coaching.com. I'll see you next week.