Getting OLD

One of the hardest things for me to comprehend is that I'm old. It's really hard for me to grasp that even now. But all the evidence keeps coming in....


I have to put on TWO pair of glasses to read my text messages.

I have to stand for awhile when I get out of bed in the morning in order to be able to even move forward.

I walk like a cripple if I have sat still for more than 30 minutes-- driving home from work, sitting at church, eating lunch at work.

I look in the mirror and where I used to have a streak of gray running through my hair, now I have only a streak of brown running through the gray.

I tell myself in disbelief: "I'M SIXTY-THREE." (I'm NOT yet, but I always go up to the next figure when the year changes for some odd reason. I just think of myself as being that next age in January even though my birthday doesn't come til later.)

I'm sixty-three and everyone knows sixty-three is "elderly".

But the thing that really makes me KNOW I'm old is how the young saints treat me. They treat me like I'm one of the "older saints".

Not middle aged.

I didn't realize how much there was a certain demeanor, a consistent tone of voice, and, yes, respect that comes across in almost every interchange between the young saints and the old saints.

When it first starts happening, it puzzles you. You don't grasp exactly what is happening. But, bit by bit, day by day, you just ACCEPT IT. This change has come because YOU REALLY ARE one of the older saints now. You realize that you are now being treated the way you too treated "older saints" .

It's not bad. It actually is honorable.
But it takes getting used to BECAUSE it means you are old now.

After all, we just don't easily learn to think of ourselves as "old". (One thing that has convinced me of the eternal nature of the soul is the fact that we just see ourselves as.... not as an age.... we just ARE. We don't relate BEing to an age. )

And it's hard to cross that line into being elderly.
For many reasons.
One is that you have to accept you really can't do things you use to do easily.
You really do need to hold on when you go down stairs.
You really do need reading glasses now.
That IS you in the mirror with all those wrinkles and gray hair. ( How DID that happen?)

You ARE one of the elderly saints.

And YOU now are one that the younger saints are looking to as an example of faithfulness and righteousness, and all that goes with being a saint long-term--having submitted to life's trials with grace and obedience "to what's preached" (knowing that was based on the word of God) .

So here you are. No longer a choir singer. No longer a Sunday School teacher. No longer a VBS teacher or helper. No longer even on the church cleaning list (that won't be much longer for me). No longer asked to help out serving food at Fellowship Meeting or to pick it up when serving grieving families.

No longer in any "position".

JUST an elderly FAITHFUL saint who shows that you don't have to have to be in the choir. You don't have to be a SS teacher. Or serve food. Or do or be anything special at all. It's enough just be be here... to worship regularly with the saints, to raise your hand in testimony that you agree with all that some song says about the goodness of God and the greatness of salvation. You don't have to have a position because your position is to show that everyone can be faithful to God, to His people, to His message of unity.

"I'm one of them today."
It's hard to grasp.

But I will... a few more halting steps. A few more blurred sights. A few more young people smiling that "faithful elderly saint" smile at me. I'll grasp it. And I'll be GLAD that I stayed faithful. I'll be glad that they can look at me and say, "She stayed true in spite of.... " and they will supply this or that or the other and IT WILL BE TRUE, because I have been faithful.

Someday God will say,

Come thou good and faithful servant, Enter into the joy of the Lord.

And my "position" as a faithful saint will be all I'll need to make it into Heaven.

.