Sometimes it stinks to get older.

Don't get me wrong - most of the time I love the age I'm at. Whatever that age is. I've loved being 26 as much as 33 and I am thoroughly loving 44. When I listen to my daughter and her friends philosophize about their lives at age 14, you can just trust me when I say I don't miss being a teen. I've never minded growing up and getting older.

But sometimes it's just hard.

In the last five years we have buried both of my husband's parents. We know what it is to walk through the suffering of illness and sorrow with friends and family. We take on these grown up things - things that rarely, if ever crossed our path as young people. I certainly never worried about death or sickness. I never worried about accidents or random acts of violence.

My carefree days are certainly not behind me. In many ways I feel freer now than I did even 10 years ago. I suppose that the weight has just shifted - the things we are faced with now are a little more serious than those in our youth and we've had time to build deeper relationships with people and so feel the weight of their loads as well.

I am now of an age where it is much more a reality to bury people we care about or see friends dealing with illness, serious illness, in their own families. And that is just difficult. It makes me feel very much like a grown up.

I know that this is the journey of all - joy and sorrow, pleasure and pain. And one is richer because of the other. In fact I don't know that we would recognize true joy without knowing real sorrow. Would I realize that vastness of the feast if I had never experienced the emptiness of hunger?

Probably not.