I can't wait to tell you just one tiny way He made his love clear to me last night.
I've been struggling with this whole aging thing for weeks.
Well...months.
...ok... years.
{back story #1} I have always prided myself on the comments I get about my youthful appearance - especially my skin. I've blamed it on being Swedish, being fluffy, or I pretend to blush while I'm putting another tally mark in the corner of my mind (another person agrees with my preferred opinion!)
Yup. I'm a sinful worshiper. A fluffy, Swedish...and now, gray-haired, idolatrous worshiper. I even had a nightmare the other night about finding a super long silver hair that had grown unnoticed. True story.
Y'all...
* I have PLUCKED each and every single silver hair that has ever dared to sprout out of my head completely out of my scalp. Yet, they dare grow back.
* I joined the 20&30 something small group at church... in my 40's.
* I even started wearing a high ponytail - because I like how young it makes me look. (Okay, also because moving the ponytail up that high removes that irritating bump I feel when I put my head against the seat rest in my sweet little bug. I have sensory issues.)
* ...I drive a granny smith apple green convertible VW Beetle. (2nd childhood?)
You get the picture, right, I don't want to age, and I want to keep pretending that I'm young.
Years ago it was the opposite for me. I see my elementary school students trying so hard to be older. I see High School students chomping at the bit to finally turn 21.
What is it that happens to the women in our culture when we turn 30? Why all the hair dye, the wrinkle cream, and the tooth whitener? God gave us all natural beauty. When we watch our children grow up, we mourn the loss of nursing, but rejoice in their 1st steps. When was it that I bought the lie that my sprouting grey hairs aren't as exciting as loosing teeth is to a kid in the first grade?
I didn't really make a New Year's Resolution, but over Christmas break, I did resolve not to become bald. My sweet little scalp has spouted several silver and white strands lately. Each were destroyed, but some of the surrounding golden browns have fallen to the friendly fire of my tweezers.
(my hand, and my Gram's)
{back story #2} I recently spent the weekend at a nursing home with my precious Gram. Oh how I love her and Grandpa SO. Nothing like spending the night in a nursing home with the aging to bring up thoughts and fears of aging. While at prayer last week, I stumbled up onto this:
Psalms 90:1-7
A prayer of Moses the man of God.
Lord, you have been our dwelling place
throughout all generations.
Before the mountains were born
or you brought forth the whole world,
from everlasting to everlasting you are God.
You turn people back to dust,
saying, “Return to dust, you mortals.”
A thousand years in your sight
are like a day that has just gone by,
or like a watch in the night.
Yet you sweep people away in the sleep of death—
they are like the new grass of the morning:
In the morning it springs up new,
but by evening it is dry and withered...
Aging is part of the beauty that God orchestrated from the dawn of time. How can I claim to love Autumn - with all it's glorious symbolism, and yet despise the (beautiful?) color changes of my own head?
Don't laugh - {back story #3} (sorry) Gram's roommate is losing her memory. I watched her wake up each morning surprised by the handsome man in the picture only to be delighted with surprise when she remembered he was her husband. No matter how many times I showed her how to use the faucet on the sink, she still asked for my help.
That night she said to me "I don't know why I keep forgetting things. I used to be in charge of everything. Now? Look at me." Her grief was real. She knew something was wrong. I somehow finally "got" it. There is hope even for her in the twilight of her time here. There is purpose for the elderly. In every change of life there is something lost, and an adventure waiting to be discovered. It's okay to grieve what is lost as long as we don't miss the joy of the mystery in our despair. Bless her heart, she has probably forgotten our conversation already. I pray there is someone to encourage her and let her know every day that she has worth.
{finally, the story}.
I started worshiping last night, kinda late. I found a chord, changed it, tweaked it...strummed a pattern...quieted my soul...waited, and listened. The only phrase that came to me was "Carry me". The melody and feel that my strumming pattern had was that of a drifting canoe. I went with it for a while and knew that I was just scratching the surface of the new song that Jesus is writing on my heart.
Carry me
Carry my hope
Set me free
Carry me
Carry the light
let me see
Carry me
Through this fire
to Your desire
I liked it okay...but nothing really sat right except the 'carry me' part. Those two words haunted me, beckoned me to find something more than a toddler's wish.
All day long, any time I had a second to breathe, it seemed like 'carry me' was being whispered in my heart.
Tonight, I googled "carry me Bible" hoping there was something in scripture that would lead me to a deeper understanding of what that phrase could mean.
What I found, floored me.
Isaiah 46:4
Even to your old age and gray hairs I am He, I am He who will sustain you. I have made you and I will carry you; I will sustain you and I will rescue you.
...I wept. Jesus knows me so well. He knows my fears. He knows when I need a word of encouragement.
Life isn't over at 40, or 80. It begins each morning.
- and each day we are carried and sustained...and sometimes rescued.
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