I’m a bicentennial baby, so this has been a milestone year for me, and it feels different than I expected. At a young friend’s bridal shower this summer, her mom gave a beautiful devotional, looking back over her daughter’s life. She remembered the days of a little girl standing on her daddy’s feet to dance with him, and looked forward to a different kind of daddy/daughter dance after he would give her hand to another man. Her mom quoted Ecclesiastes 7:10, “Say not, ‘Why were the former days better than these?’ For it is not from wisdom that you ask this.”
My goodness, have I spent a lot of time this year thinking about the former days, and often with longing! Every aspect of my life—physical, mental, emotional, and spiritual—has aged and changed. It seems Robert Frost was right that “Nothing Gold Can Stay.”
In my 40s, I did a savage race with friends from church, and then two consecutive sprint triathlons with my husband. Funny story: you probably know that racers wear bibs with numbers on them, but did you know that they usually write their age on their calves? We didn’t either. We wrote our bib numbers. They were 571 and 491. Someone asked my husband if he was a zombie. There were many people in that race older than both of us (according to our actual ages), so I wasn’t worried that age would rob me of the ability to keep exercising hard.
Somehow, it has. Physically, I cannot imagine doing another sprint triathlon. These days I walk, like a lot of other middle-aged women. Somehow it came as a surprise to me that I too would succumb to whatever it is about age that makes a person less tolerant of certain exercises. The physical signs of my aging are many. I take enough supplements to fill a small toolbox. Instagram sends me hilarious videos about women with chin hairs, and I can no longer leave my house without my eyeglasses. The days when I could swim a quarter mile and then bike twelve miles and then run three miles did not stay. My long, thick hair and 20/20 vision did not stay, either. Indeed, “charm is deceptive and beauty is fleeting” (Prov. 31:30 NIV).
But it isn’t just my appearance and strength that have changed. Like many other women my age, I forget people’s names, I forget why I walked into a room, and I forget basic vocabulary mid-sentence. More than the forgetting, the hard part of these mental changes is that they’re changes. Things that used to be done easily now require more time and energy, which is an unexpected adjustment. I have to budget tasks differently than I used to. But it also feels like a loss of identity, as so many things about reaching fifty do.
Emotionally, my identity as a mom has gone through the biggest change. One of my sons graduated college, the second is halfway through, and my daughter is halfway through high school. They’re each at varying stages of not needing or wanting my help or advice as they make major decisions. I still remember heading home from my first date with my husband after our first baby was born. We had carefully squeezed it into two hours, because I needed to be back in time to feed our baby. I had a moment of near-panic thinking, “This baby needs me present every two hours in order to stay alive.” It felt so heavy and stifling in the moment. But it didn’t take long to orient my life around my children, and then to even enjoy seeking their good above my own. These people who I taught to ride a bike, simplify an equation, and spell “answer” are now mowing my lawn, teaching me how to use the “Now Playing” app and answering my many “Is this video AI?” queries. I love them like crazy. But I also know they’d like to leave and start their own families. This shouldn’t surprise me. I’ve been telling them for ages that children are the best, and sacrificing for them is deeply rewarding. I’m glad they want families of their own. But the former days seem better, when they were my little children, all at home around the table for dinner, snuggled up in my lap for a book, asking me questions and trusting that I had good answers. I miss those little people even as I love the big ones who have taken their place.
When I see the young moms at church, it doesn’t feel that long ago that my babies were in the nursery, and my children were the ones charming people with their precociousness. I don’t walk around with a mirror in front of me, reminding me of my age, so I often forget that it doesn’t surprise others that I’m now older the way it surprises me. People will make reference to me being older than them, and I feel momentarily surprised that they know this just by looking at me. I was delighted recently when I dropped my car off for an oil change and the older man who owns the shop said, “Okay, we’ll have that done for you soon, young lady.” God bless him.
But I must say, from a spiritual standpoint, I do not miss being young one bit. I don’t miss being easily offended, surprised by suffering, insensitive, uncertain, discontent, envious, anxious, or foolish. When I was young, I loved missionary biographies, and I wanted to be a missionary because it seemed like the fast track to spiritual maturity. I’m so thankful God allowed me to discover first-hand that it was. I experienced discomfort that I would not have invited into my life otherwise and wouldn’t have endured if it had been easy to leave. Yet it burned the dross from my life like a cleansing fire. I grew in contentment and gratitude and patience and peace and trust. When younger women come to me with a struggle, I often have personal experience with something similar, so I can comfort them with the comfort I received myself.
When we lived overseas, there were many needs around us, and we were often in a position to help. It was such a contrast to coming back to the U.S., where we often spoke to groups about our need for financial support in order to do our work. I preferred being the one who gave. Being older has some advantages over being younger because I have resources of experience that my younger self didn’t have, so I get to be generous now in ways I couldn’t then.
After our first triathlon taught us about the ages written on calves, I paid attention during the second race. It was humbling to bike up behind a woman decades older than me and realize how much faster she had finished the swim than I had, and how hard it was to pass her on my bike. It occurred to me that I wasn’t surprised or disappointed when a younger lady breezed past me, and it was the opposite of what I expected spiritually. In the Christian family, my hope is that the women older than me are also spiritually ahead of me, and it’s surprising when that’s not true. I don’t want to be an older woman who disappoints others by not having the spiritual maturity that my experience makes possible.
I can’t find the quote now, but after Dolly Parton died, I heard an interview where she shared a conversation with her husband. He said, “You’re not getting any younger,” and she replied that as long as there was Botox and plastic surgery, she wasn’t getting any older either. I will keep getting older. I might not be young enough to do any more sprint triathlons, but I have a much better race to run, and I want to run to obtain the prize (1 Cor. 9:24). I want to lay aside every weight, and sin which clings so closely, and run with endurance, looking to Jesus, the founder and perfecter of my faith (Heb. 12:1). I don’t have to be young to do that.
Frost said that nothing gold could stay, and that has been true in my life. My strong, youthful body did not stay. My sharp, youthful mind did not stay. My adorable young children did not stay little. But is it true thatnothinggold can stay? “In this you rejoice, though now for a little while, if necessary, you have been grieved by various trials, so that the tested genuineness ofyour faith—more precious than goldthat perishes though it is tested by fire—may be found to result in praise and glory and honor at the revelation of Jesus Christ.” Something far better than goldcanstay—your faith. My fellow bicentennial babies might be tempted to ask why the former days were better than these, but that does not come from wisdom. “Though our outer self is wasting away, our inner self is being renewed day by day” (2 Cor. 2:4).