Appreciate this post as it echos the atmosphere in my own mind.  I'm grateful to be 51 years old.  Grateful for the life I have today, grateful for my sons and the young men I get to watch them become,  grateful for what I've learned from the mistakes I've made (and that I don't have to do that again!), grateful for decades of blessings I look at to build my faith for the future, grateful for the more complete sense of self that I enjoy today, grateful for the life ahead of me.  I tire of the you're-not-good-enough messages that our culture abounds in, no matter what your age.  I remind myself of truth on a regular basis; one truth is that God has a plan for my life where ever I am.  Moses did not lead the children of Israel out of Egypt until well after he was 40 years old.   In 2009, when I was 49yrs old, I lost a career job for a company that I'd worked for the preceding 10 years.  It was scarey, but I knew God was in control of my life.  For 10 months I even went  back to working at something that I'd done 17yrs prior.  Then this past August I started on a new career path and I am currently challenged by a whole new work world where I'm looking forward to a substantial promotion this coming July that the company is currently grooming me toward.