As We Age…

“Youth is a gift of nature, but age is a work of art.

Stanislaw Jerzy Lec

Teach us to number our days, that we may gain a heart of wisdom                                                                Psalm 90:12

Today’s blog is for the senior set. I hope younger readers appreciate it as well. As I was speaking to clients the other day, I was going over some of the losses they had experienced. I discussed the fact that they were grieving a loss in their family due to a recent divorce. Seeing this divorce as a loss to be grieved was something that they had not really considered.

I went on to talk about the fact that as we age, we begin losing things in our life. We lose friends and family who have died. We witness changes around us that make us long for the past days when life seemed simpler and even safer. Finally, we grieve the loss of certain functions- we do not hear as well, see as well, move as fluidly, etc. We are experiencing loss.

The counterbalance to this is that we acquire wisdom. As we age, we gain certain things also. We gain perspective over a lifetime of experiences. We better recognize the things that we can control versus the things we cannot control. We have seen good times and bad, and we realize that neither last forever. We have seen that God’s hand is always present, whether we se it at the time or not.

So, there is a trade-off. Yes, we are in the process of losing some things around us and in us. But we gain wisdom, which is a marvelous gift.

Prayer: Lord, help us to see the things we gain as we age, not the things we lost, Amen