Don’t waste your aging

My father-in-law has fallen again. I heard the loud thud from the kitchen and there he was like a beached whale, motionless on his tummy where he landed. His doctor has told me the best predictor of a fall risk is having fallen.

My indoor-outdoor cat now spends half her day in bed and has become clingy, as if she’s developed a reflective streak and realizes we have been through a lot together over 15 years. I open the front door and she looks outside for a long minute and then turns back in.

My father asked me to slow down on our walk a few months ago, only a half mile into the course. I looked at him like I didn’t even know him. He had never said those words to me before and was embarrassed. I felt a bit betrayed but didn’t say so.

These are the days when “the clouds return after the rain” (good days are a short reprieve before more cloudy skies). “The keepers of the house tremble” (hands shake, words are frail). “The strong men are bent” (two of us in this house walk close to perpendicular). “The grinders cease because they are few” (one favors the side of my mouth with more teeth). “Those who look through the windows are dimmed” (I keep taking my glasses on and off and can’t decide which way is better).

“The sound of the grinding is low” (people seem to mumble, or is it me?). “One rises up at the sound of a bird” (light sleep). “Terrors are in the way” (it used to be so annoying when your grandmother said to be careful of this and careful of that.) “The almond tree blossoms” (a crown of white hair). “And desire fails” (some temptations are quenched not through virtue but ennui.) “Before the silver cord is snapped, or the golden bowl is broken, or the pitcher is shattered at the fountain, or the wheel broken at the cistern …” (second law of thermodynamics: Everything snaps, gives out, crumbles).

God is always taking curses and turning them into plusses for those who believe in Him to do that very thing.

A chiropractor who was working on my husband’s back told us that the body has a memory. It has registered all those high school injuries you thought you put behind you 40 years ago, and here they are again, saying, “Yoo-hoo! Remember me?”

If you study the Bible just for this, you will find that God is always taking curses and turning them into plusses for those who believe in Him to do that very thing. Satan sows thorns and thistles in Paradise, and God uses it to mold character. Israelite recalcitrance reaps the whirlwind, but her temporary cutting off allows the Gentiles to be grafted in.

Of the four of us under this roof (not including the cat), I’m in the best shape. It could go either way for me at this point, spiritually. I could be proud and forget what I have seen and waste my aging. Or I could recognize that Ecclesiastes 12 is meant to make me take Ecclesiastes 11 seriously and to “cast my bread on the waters” without being so risk-averse and fearful of men’s opinions. “He who observes the wind will not sow, and he who regards the clouds will not reap.”

The day is coming when I won’t have strength to cast or reap. I have a friend who is a chaplain for a hospice agency. She is sometimes the very last person someone sees. Some people only want to hold her hand and just be quiet. I wonder what they’re thinking, and I’ll bet that no one in that hour is regretting having lived too much for God.

“The end of the matter; all has been heard. Fear God and keep his commandments, for this is the whole duty of man. For God will bring every deed into judgment, with every secret thing, whether good or evil” (Ecclesiastes 12:13-14).