Stewarding 40

Today I turn 39 years old. I have a loving husband, amazing kids, and a steady roof over my head. By most definitions, I am a lucky woman.

If you’re waiting for a “but,” you may be slightly disappointed. I am a lucky woman, AND I’ve been asking myself how to welcome middle age—not with a blowout party or expensive gifts, but with a quiet sense of accomplishment. I am happy AND I am also aware of the gap between the life I am living and the one I imagined. The world is a scary and insecure place right now AND I can steward my own small corner of it.

I’ve become fascinated by the concept of stewardship. It is the art of managing something that doesn’t directly belong to you—a role that requires both fierce responsibility and total surrender. I have been given these great gifts: a home, a body, a mind, and a soul. But I’m not sure I’ve been taking care of them as well as I could.

Having come of age during the era of “Eat, Pray, Love” and “Julie & Julia,” the idea of a journey toward self-discovery is baked into my bones. So, I am launching a year-long project I’m calling Stewarding 40. I will be focusing on four quadrants of my life—Home, Health, Head, and Heart—rotating my focus within each quadrants every three months with the seasons.

Home

I have dreamt of self-sufficiency since I was 22. Graduating into the 2008 financial crisis left me with a lingering anxiety and a dream of a self-reliant, off-grid life. Nearly two decades later, that homestead is still just a dream. But that doesn’t mean I can’t do anything. Last year we bought a house in town with a yard begging for a garden and a pantry aching to be filled. I have two able hands and a desire to learn.

The Plan: Building the Garden (Summer), Food Preservation (Autumn), Sourdough and Breadmaking (Winter), and Decluttering (Spring).

Health

I love my children more than life itself, and frankly, it’s starting to show. Beyond the weight gain of motherhood, I’ve developed a string of complaints that, left unchecked, could leave me immobile by 50. This past winter, when a herniated cervical disc left me unable to pick up my three-year-old, I realized that I’ve spent too long with my head buried in the sand. When Mamma’s arms fail, something has to change.

The Plan: Beginner Strength Training (Summer), Joint Mobility (Autumn), Consistency and Weight (Winter), and Functional Cardio (Spring).

Head

Recently, I realized I haven’t picked up an adult book since my eldest was born six years ago. I’ve traded literature for doomscrolling and short-form “escapes.” As a former voracious reader, this doesn’t sit right. So this year,  I plan to exercise my brain with the same intensity as my body.

The Plan: Social Media Detox (Summer), Back to Pleasure Reading (Autumn), Memorization (Winter), and Future Visioning (Spring).

Heart

This has been the hardest area to define. I often feel pulled in a dozen directions, trying to please everyone and succeeding in satisfying no one. My priorities feel skewed I want to strengthen my core relationships by giving them dedicated seasons of my attention.

The Plan: Family and Husband (Summer), The Self (Autumn), God (Winter), and Community (Spring).

---

Stewardship is not about ownership; it is about faithfulness. It’s the realization that I am not the master of my life, but the manager of a sacred trust. I don’t want to arrive at 40 having simply survived another year. I want to arrive having cultivated the soil I was given.

The garden is waiting, the weights are ready, and the books are dusty, but open.

39 begins today. It’s time to get to work.