For some birthdays are frightening, depressing or discouraging. This reality has made the makers of lotions, surgeries and self help books wildly wealthy.
Aging has never been a thorn in my flesh. Birthdays come and go, as do wrinkles, coarse hair (covered by my lovely stylist) … and, speaking of hair, I no longer pluck my eyebrows, but I am constantly discovering them on my chin (often long enough to put in a ponytail by the time I notice them).
For me, the greys can still be covered, the wrinkles make me smile and the hairs on my chinny chin chin … they get plucked.
I have a hope for my future, alive or dead, and an appreciation for each moment I have breathed.
Don’t get me wrong, if I were given a fatal diagnosis, I would sob my eyes out and I would feel fear and sorrow. But death is not my greatest fear as I rapidly move through this autumn of my life.
My greatest angst about aging is quite simple, that …
I am running out of time.
Time to do all the things, travel to all the places, spend time with the people, try the new experiences, share the love of God, time to live … to really, fully, intentionally, live this one magnificent and glorious gift of a life that I have been given.
I don’t want to waste a moment!
Sometimes the urgency within me to do all the things resembles one who scurries in a state of constant activity powered by something deep within.
But, now in my fifties there is a new factor that is irritating me … fatigue. This fatigue does not whisper, take a break, but stops me in my tracks, holding my mind and body ransom so that I no longer can do that one more thing. This only increases my passion to not waste the days, the hours, the moments I have been given.
“Lord, life is going by so fast!
Tim Keller
It frightens me unless I remember your eternity.
We are as rootless as tumbleweeds
and will be blown about all our lives unless you are our dwelling place.
In you we are home.
What I have in you I can never lose and will have forever.
I praise you for this unfathomable comfort.
Amen.
These words of Keller stopped me the other day. They reminded me that my purpose is not just doing, but being.
They are the truthful assurance of eternity, for those of us who have submitted to the will of God. They are the reminder that it is in Him we have our foundation, our roots. They are the reminder that even during times of fatigue, we are with Him and He is with us and in that here we also have purpose.
“I cry out to God Most High,
to God who fulfills His purpose for me.”
Psalm 57:2
itsawonderfilledlife 