I read my book last month.  Well, I’ve been reading it since October, one edit after another. There were times I became sick of it, times I thought it was terrible, times I thought it was good.  The last week of April, I recorded it for the audiobook.

Steven, the engineer from Simon & Schuster, conveniently lives in Nederland, not far from my home. He’s quite the accomplished engineer, having worked on Pet Sounds and Graceland as well other legendary rock and roll albums. He’s recorded books for Ronald Regan, Steve Martin and Charlton Heston, among others – over 3,000 books altogether. I liked him right away, which made me comfortable. We set up a recording studio in the office at my house. Steven covered the desk with a blanket, wrapped a folding divider behind me, and positioned microphones just so.

He had to come  back the day after the setup to troubleshoot a few odd electronic interruptions, all eventually traced to Alexa, the girl who eavesdrops on everything said in the house. We cut her lifeline and turned off the furnace and on a cold Monday morning in April, and I started reading my book aloud.

I’d have to take a break every few hours and turn the heat back on for 30 minutes or so. Did I mention we got 8 inches of snow that week?  All in all, it never got too uncomfortable in the house. I think I’d rather turn off the HVAC and lose heat in April than air conditioning in July.  Besides, the warm sweater soothed my soul, which needed soothing.

I wept. I cried as I read the poem Nicole wrote for me as I began working on the book. I wept through the entire introduction, which ends with the telling of our wedding night.  I cried so much we had to record those two again, after I finished  everything else. Steven was comfortable with me shedding tears.

The first fifteen chapters of the book are the sequential story of my life thus far.  The last several of those chapters are when I cried the most. A few times I began sobbing as soon as I finished the last line of a chapter. Stephen, listening to every line, would suggest we take a break.

I have never listened to audiobooks. I work on writing sermons in my head or memorizing them while I’m running. I listen to NPR in the car. I’ve never found the time (or desire) to listen to an audiobook.  But after recording my memoir, I think everyone should listen to a book, particularly a memoir read by the author. So much comes out in the human voice that cannot be seen on the page. The voice shows more than it tells, which is a good thing.

I liked the story, and the telling of it. I thought the editors had done a good job helping the writer (who would be me) figure out what was needed and what was extraneous.  The book had a nice flow.  I thought if I was just the voice artist recording the book and not its author, I would still enjoy reading the book and might recommend it to my friends.

While I was reading my book, I realized the story is universal. In the dedication I write, “For all who believe the call toward authenticity is sacred, and holy, and for the greater good.” The particulars are mine, but the call onto what Joseph Campbell calls the Hero’s Journey is universal.  It is the landscape of all restless souls who want to make a difference in this short pause between two great mysteries. I believe my story might ease you into your story. Listening to it might accomplish that even more effectively than reading it.

This living is serious business, and we are all pilgrims, called by our better angels onto a sacred journey. As I read my book aloud, I prayed it might call you more deeply into your journey. We all need every bit of help we can get to live fully into our true selves.

And so it goes.

My parents were married 75 years ago today.  I am likely one of only two people who will remember their anniversary.  Dad passed away last May and Mom died six months earlier.  Their marriage lasted for 73½ years.

David Williams and Margaret Stone met when my father was a sophomore at Kentucky Christian College and my mother was a senior at Prichard High School in Grayson, Kentucky. They married after my father graduated from college and moved to Advance, Indiana, where Dad preached at a country church while working on his master’s degree at Butler University. My brother was born 14 months after they moved to Indiana. I came along four years later, when my father was serving a church in Huntington, West Virginia.

Their marriage was not perfect. None of them are. My mother could be a delightful individual in public settings, but privately, she struggled greatly. In ways I will never know, she was terribly wounded in childhood and never recovered from those wounds.  She brought her pain with her and unfortunately shed it upon the members of her household.

My father was a gentle and easy-going man. He was hard-working, congenial, and terrified of upsetting my mother, which followed a childhood of being terrified of upsetting his mother.  We try to work out so much of our childhood pain in our choice of partners. Dad admitted to me only once just how difficult it was being married to my mother. He was in his last few years of ministry in Grayson, where we had moved when I was in high school.  Once they retired to Lexington, Dad seemed to have made peace with the realities of what their relationship would and would not be. They settled into a rhythm that suited them both.

My parents loved to travel, though most of their trips were close to home. They went to Gatlinburg, Tennessee at least once a year, but save a single visit to Colorado in 2007, they never traveled west of the Mississippi or overseas. Other than one short visit to Niagara Falls, my mother never left the United States. The vacation they never stopped talking about was their one trip to Hawaii, when they were in their early fifties. They traveled with a tour and went to three of the four major islands. Mom talked about it for decades.

The evangelical conviction that marriage is for life was a given in our family. Evangelical pastors who divorced did not work again in an evangelical church. That rule has caused a lot of evangelicals to remain in marriages that are no longer healthy or viable.  On the other hand, marriages were secure, and there was a great incentive to work through your problems instead of running from them.  Unfortunately, my experience is that most couples don’t actually work through their problems; they stuff them.

Interestingly, three kinds of marriages tend to survive. Marriages in which there are big fights and lots of passion are surprisingly resilient. The same is true of marriages in which feelings are stuffed and there is rarely any real communication.  The healthiest marriages, of course, are those in which there is mutual respect, open and honest communication, and a commitment to work through whatever has to be worked through. They are the least common of the three.

My parent’s marriage was in the second category. Outright conflict was rare. Usually, Mom just made her demands and Dad just acquiesced. It was sad, but like I said, by the time they were in their sixties, we had all made peace with the fact that their marriage was what it was.

I traveled to Kentucky to be with them on their 60^th anniversary, a year before I started hormones, when I first began to realize my own marriage might not survive to fifty years, let alone sixty. They went back to Grayson and celebrated with a reception at the church Dad served for 22 years. There was an article in the local newspaper.

The paper is gone now, and so are Mom and Dad. I wish they were here, and that I could be with them today.  They gave me life and a strong sense of self.  For that, I shall always be grateful.

I turned a certain age this month.  I am told I do not look that age.  Apparently, I have good genes. My parents lived well into their 90s and always looked younger than they were. Some of it is that I color my hair, which I have no intention of stopping.  And some is because estrogen is a marvelous substance that keeps the body looking younger.

I suppose I am also aided by the fact that I do not act like an older person. I mountain bike, road bike, or run six days a week. Recently, I was on the fifth floor of a hotel for a week and took the steps to my room all day every day.  I like to stay on the move. I have always been a Renaissance person, and my mind is constantly working on the next thing. I just finished my memoir, pastor a church, counsel clients, and speak all over the world on gender equity. I have no plans to slow down anytime soon.

Still, I turned a certain age this month, and I do not like it. I said to everyone at church, “I turn fifty next Sunday, so come to the service and celebrate with me.” One kind man thought I was serious when I said I turn fifty.  When I told him that was not the case, he said, “Well, you certainly don’t look sixty.” I just left it at that.

Men gain prestige as they age, though even they eventually reach a point of diminishing returns. One of my male mentors said, “When I turned sixty, I found out it was the new fifty.  When I turned seventy, I found out it was the new sixty. But when I turned eighty, I found out eighty is just eighty.”  Still, two men in the later half of their seventies squared off in the 2020 Presidential campaign. We make room for older men in the world. Older women – not so much.

I am on a flight to Maui as I am typing this post.  I am fortunate to have an upgrade, but it is unfortunately one of my least favorite airplanes, an Airbus 321neo.  It’s a “next generation” narrow body jet that is being purchased by airlines to use on long over water routes. I asked a flight attendant, “How do you like the neo?” He answered, “Yes, we have meal service.”  I said, “No, I’m asking about the airplane – the Airbus 321neo. How do you like it on a route this long?”  He said, “It’s good,” and walked away.  Cathy was flying with me and said, “Yep, that’s how it goes.” I couldn’t possibly have any real knowledge about airliners.

As the flight attendant was preparing meal service, he saw on his paper that I am an Executive Platinum member, which means I fly over 100k miles a year, and have well over two million miles with American Airlines. He came back and made quite a point of saying, “We value your loyalty to us.” Then he actually answered my question, “No, I don’t like the neo, it’s underpowered and too small for a trip like this.”  But he had to see my status before he took me seriously.

I do not want people to know my age because I do not want to be taken less seriously than I am already taken.  Being an older woman is not an affliction. It is a privilege. And the wisdom older cisgender women bring with them is a national treasure. They know about privilege, systemic injustice, equality, and the sanctity of life that the rest of us only read about.  There is a reason that wisdom in the Hebrew scriptures is referred to in the feminine gender.

I have an alpha personality. That means I am confident, action-oriented, and have high expectations of myself and others. I process information quickly and am obsessed with return on investment.  How can I be more efficient to accomplish more good work? Those are not specifically gendered attributes, but how they are received is gender specific. A man with an alpha personality is praised. A woman with an alpha personality is “that woman.” Behind her back, a single word is used to describe her. An older woman with an alpha personality is in deep trouble. She will be put out to pasture as fast as those in power can figure out how to do it without a lawsuit.  Hilary Clinton never had a chance. A woman is not allowed to be ambitious and strong.

I do not tell people my age because I want to be taken seriously. It really is that simple. I want to be heard. I want my knowledge, history and wisdom to be brought to the table. I want my words and actions to matter. I want to make a difference in the world.  When I spoke as a guy, people listened. When I speak as a woman, people say, “That’s nice.” Nice is not what I am going for. Change is what I am going for.

So yes, I had a big birthday, but I’m not being put out to pasture. I’m going to Hawaii with my family to celebrate. I will celebrate before I get back to work. I have a lot I want to get done in the world. And if everybody knows my age, it’s just gonna get in the way of doing it.

And so it goes.