The Lord gives strength to his people; the Lord blesses his people with peace.
“You are capable of taking every situation in your life and representing it in a way that will lead to joy or to despair. The interpretation is in your hands.”
Richard L. Ganz
Some years ago, we were living next door to my husband’s elderly life-long bachelor second cousin (can you translate all that?) when he became seriously ill for the first time. Since he had no spouse, no children, and no family living close enough (or young enough) to help him out, it fell to our family to assist him.
As he battled several types of cancer, an open-heart surgery, diabetes, Parkinson’s and more…we learned a lot about care giving through trial and error firsthand experience. He fought one physical illness after another for five years straight before he passed away following a minor hospital procedure.
Fight For Joy
A few years later, my husband’s dad was diagnosed with esophageal cancer that he fought for five months before he did. Since we lived in the same city as my father in law, I was able to spend considerable time with him during his various medical appointments and cancer treatments. His fight with cancer was extremely painful, agonizingly so. And yet, I recall the time spent with him as more meaningful and memorable than all the previous years when he was healthy put together.
The farther in time that I move away from these two experiences of care giving, the more I recognize how we age (and die) is a personal choice. My father in law never once complained, he was consistently thankful (and said so) for all the help the family gave him. He accepted his grim diagnosis with a grace that still awes me today. I was blessed by his courageous example (and still am.)
Fight For Joy
Contrasting this lovely, yet bittersweet experience with our previous care giving stint and there’s no comparison. For sure, we were newbies in the care giving arena and undoubtedly did some things wrong…but it was a daily ordeal for me to offer care to this relative/neighbor. I’ve often wondered why I will recall with a slight shudder those five years of giving care to one man and not another? I’ve come to the conclusion that the person we are when we are young multiplies in spades as we age.
If I’m an angry young and middle-aged person…when I’m old (and when the social filters evaporate,) I’ll be an outwardly angry person when I’m aged. This is a huge caution for all of us. I would never, ever, want to burden my family in any way as I age. But the worst possible weight I could place upon my kids would be if I started exhibiting attitudes of anger, bitterness, selfishness, pettiness, and the like.
Fight For Joy
None of us can control exactly how our physical bodies will age over time. We can, however, do quite a lot about developing godly character on the inside that will reveal what we value most on the outside, as we get older. Make no mistake, as we age, those carefully honed social filters will evaporate and when they do, who we really are is going to become blaringly obvious to one and all.
Aging. It truly is that bitter or better proposition. You can view people who have the same situation, identical challenges, similar support systems, and yet they approach their difficulties completely different. Rather than simply believing it is a positive or negative outlook on life in general, I think it goes much deeper. It’s all about interpretation.
Those who age with good grace work hard to maintain a hope-full attitude. Those who age poorly (and by poorly, I mean with a defeatist mentality) give themselves over to a hope-less mindset. It’s written all over their faces. If I’m convinced that God has charted out my hours and days, and His Word tells me He has, then it’s up to me to take God at His Word and to bring whatever situation I’m in under an interpretation that will honor Him.
As I learn to interpret the necessary losses that come with aging in line with eternal promises, aging loses its power to defeat me. Similarly, if I only focus on what I’m no longer able to accomplish, then hopelessness will take over.
No power on earth should extinguish the joy and peace that Jesus has placed into my heart. That “no power” includes aging and its accompanying (often distressing) elements. Instead, I must choose joy apart from circumstances to maintain a peaceful attitude. It’s all about how we decide to interpret our situations. Aging, it’s an art we need to begin developing while we’re still young and able enough to do so.
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