I’m not that young anymore!

HAS THIS EVER HAPPENED TO YOU?

Has this ever happened to you? Did you ever have an epiphany you are really the age you are and not that twenty-three-year-old, ten percent body fat, six-minute miler with a propensity for math and language, the guy or gal people laughed with, bought drinks for, and just wanted to be around?

Aside from most of that being a fabrication for myself, I discovered this within the past year—or maybe it was two?

IT WAS WHILE I WAS CUTTING DOWN….

It was while I was cutting down three very large, and dying mulberry trees in my front and back yards. It was a realization, as I climbed my way up into the branches to start at the top and work my way down with a very sharp and heavy chain saw, that my sixty-plus something aged body could really hurt itself by falling—with a chain saw. It wouldn’t be a straight fall either. I would bounce off the very branches I wanted to cut. Eventually, landing on my back, head, shoulders. The chain saw following-still running. Being I have been widowed for a couple of years, no one would find me for a while either.

“Have you talked to Dad in the last couple of days?”

“No, did you?”

“No. Brother—”

“Yeah?”

“Have you talked to Dad?”

“Last weekend.”

“He’s fine. I’ll call him tonight. Wait-kids have a game. I’ll check tomorrow morning.”

It was an epiphany on the first tree. I still had it and two more to do, AND the big ones were still ahead. As a kid, I use to climb up on the roof to trim those same trees, get them away from the roof, my father watching from the safety of Earth. Then, because I could, I would leap down and do a ninja tuck and roll, standing up and go on about cleaning and piling those same branches to be picked up for trash. Now, well, I would predict there would be an explosion of femurs and hips and spines.

Yes, I still climb trees. Well, those I cut down were the last ones. I still get up on my roof to look at my new solar panels. I still cook and light candles in the morning because I like the smell and the light. I still go to the gym—early. But its only to stave off the inevitable.  The fact of the end of the run is closer to the end than to the beginning. Only this season is where hips explode and arthritic hands lose their grip on, well, chain saws.

But as I get closer to ‘Crossing the Bar’ I have started to realize and admit to and depend on a bunch of things.

• Careful climbing trees. Don’t stop climbing trees, just be more aware if you fall you will be eating from a tube shoved up your nose for the rest of your life.
• Shoes come untied-often. Check them-often.
• Fiber is our friend. Sure, maybe too much information, but it’s true.
• I need to be still and let God be God and let Him love me.

‘Whoa, slow down there li’l pony. How do you get to God from chain saws?’

As I have gotten older, I have become more aware of God, Jesus, and the Holy Spirit. The Big Trifecta. My wife’s passing was an ‘ah-ha’ moment. I have had my share of Deal Makings with God. “God, if you do this, I will do that.” Most of the time, God’s side of the deal was never carried out. Usually when it did happen, almost always in some other form than I wished, I never paid my end of the deal. I’m not even sure I said thanks.

Until the dumpsters fires became real.

IT WAS A PERFECT STORM

It was a perfect storm. I was older and more aware of who and what God is. And the event, whatever it was, caused me to instead of making deals, to watch quietly what He did. It was a simple thing—simple words. “Be still and know I am God.’ Finally, I heard them.

It struck me to ask myself maybe He is the great I Am. And if he was, I needed to listen, instead of making deals. He didn’t need me to make a deal. He is the deal.

Maybe it was the idea he wasn’t that Disciplinarian waiting to smack me with a ruler across the knuckles for disobeying Him. He could have. He actually invented knuckles, and rulers, and well, me.

But He doesn’t beat up his kids and, according to the book I read, I am a child of God. He disciplines me, sure, but He is never-ever angry with me and always in loving correction. Everything in my life, He was aware of before I was. I remember having a discussion with someone about why did God do this or do that—like He was a vindictive tyrant just waiting for them to mess up. I loved the answer someone gave and I have adopted it. He did something which may, at the time, appear out of anger. It appeared that way because we didn’t agree with it.

Until later.

He does things sometimes because if He didn’t, it would have molded into something so much worse. Sometimes, these revelations in my gooey mind, have been there all along, I probably even thought of them consciously, but then, in His perfect timing, it dawns on me.

And it sticks-forever.

For me, it has taken years for me to hear God. Still, it can sound like static, but He waits patiently-standing under the tree, waiting to catch me when I bounce off the branches on the way to Earth.