Growing Old.

I have been dealing with growing older for the first time in my life.  Not wiser mind you, just older.  I am now at the age where people turn to me for advice and I find myself worried about things I say. 

I think in a way we become younger in our growing older.  It is a time of "Firsts" again.  We are like a toddler exploring a new land and frontier and no one speaks our language.  Hair grows in new places, joints and muscles don’t move the way we expect.  Our sight and hearing are diminishing and our memories , well, they are vivid, yet not always accurate as they were in years past.

We finally get the bravery to try new things only to realize our bodies won't allow the physicality to complete our new found courage.  I have grown old.  Not because my body is giving up, but because I have.  I have forgotten how to look at things like they are new.  I dwell on the negative aspects of this season of life. 

    One of the reasons for this negativity is the loss of lifetime friends and other friends going on to meet their maker.  These were risk takers and adventurers' to me.  Now when I get an ache or pain I worry…is this my last day, is this the pain that takes me down?  Later I will burp or cough and it goes away and I laugh at my silliness but still hang on to the fear.    That is the key word now, my friends death have taught me to fear.  I have been fearless for years and believed myself invulnerable to  growing old.  I was Peter Pan.  I want to be fearless again.  I want to believe in making the impossible improvable, but not impossible.  I am still an optimist in so many ways, but not like I was.  I teach young children starting their lives, I live for their energy and enthusiasm.  It gives me strength.  In them I hear the voice of God that used to speak to me directly.  I do not ignore God or his talking to me I am not sure I listen as closely. 

Each week brings a renewal of work where I push to reboot my optimism.  I pray and ask God for help.  I am never unhappy with his answer, though I am in conflict with my thought.  Part of me lives in this depression and another part of me lives in this hope.  I bounce from one to the other like a toy ball slammed into the concrete.  I rise to new heights but come crashing down within minutes only to pick myself up again and rise even higher.  The lows scrape me and beat me up and try to keep me down.  The highs sing with all the glory of looking to the future and pushing away  the clouds.  I reach for the sunshine, I reach for family, I reach for friends…I have become needy.  I want to be more than my existence.  Yet some days I feel like all I am doing is existing.  Where is my wonder, my creativity, my adventurer, my lust and love for life?  Is it buried in a depression or just shuffled aside while I remake who I am?  Change, a necessary thing in our lives...just wish I had more control over it.

~Curtain~