itsawonderfilledlife

You can’t teach an old dog a new trick.

Growing old is mandatory; growing up is optional.

You are only young once, but you can stay immature indefinitely.

Old age isn’t so bad when you consider the alternative.

I love these age related sayings! They make me smile at the truths tucked into their humor or irony. Ten years ago they would not have been as entertaining to me as they are now. Even five years ago they would not have held the same attraction for me. But now I am contemplating my twenty-fifth high school reunion, and am becoming more authentically archaic.

Getting older isn’t really so bad 😉 One of the best things about getting older is that I have been learning something that has been changing my life.

I am not sure what caused this change in my thinking, but it’s effects have been profound! In the past, when I would have a struggle, a disappointment or was hurt by something or someone, I would (sigh) feel sorry for myself. You know, singing the ‘poor me’ song?

What I have been learning over the past few years is that when those inevitably disappointing times and events come, I ask a simple question, ‘what am I to learn from this?’ Now the question is not magical, nor does it wipe the yuck from the situation I am experiencing, but what it does is better. The question moves me along from the eye of the storm I am in, to the calm at the end of the storm.

My focus changes!

This change of focus has meant that I feel less hopeless, I feel less anxiety. Ironically, I also feel less out of control, because I recognize, right form the beginning, that I am not in control anyway.

This reminds me that, in Ephesians 4:23, “you were taught to be made new in your thinking.”

I am thinking that another way to say that is, you CAN teach an old dog a new trick.