Sometime in our thirties, we realize we can’t do everything we did in our teens and twenties. My sons that age have joked about throwing their back out when they sneezed or turned quickly.

In our forties, suddenly our body chemistry changes. I never had problems with dairy products until I was forty. When I asked my doctor why I suddenly did, he just answered “hormones.” I also became allergic to penicillin and sulfa around that time, though I had taken them for years before.

It seems the older we get, the more we lose physically. Our energy diminishes. Our health may go downhill. Our looks melt into wrinkles and greyness. Our vision and hearing may become problematic. Eventually, we might have to give up car keys. Our decreasing mobility may require walkers or canes.

In some ways, we might feel we’ve lost our identity. Women facing the empty nest and men facing retirement may struggle with who they are and what to do with themselves. We may not be able to participate in the ministries or activities we always used to.

We might feel the sting of lost influence as younger people think we’re out of touch and seek their peers’ advice and fellowship instead.

And, if we live long enough, we might lose our homes and end up in a facility. I remember when my mother-in-law moved into assisted living, I was sad that her life was now reduced to one room.

We may lose our privacy and dignity if we can no longer take care of our bathing, dressing, and toileting. And we may lose our memories if we develop dementia.

This all might sound really depressing except for a few factors.

I heard someone on the radio years ago say that one reason our bodies start falling apart as we age is to make us willing to let loose of them. We have such a strong survival instinct, and we often want to stay for our families. But gradually we admit that heaven looks much better than life here.

God is gracious to make us aware of our mortality in increments. As we face each relinquishment, we’re geared a little more toward eternity.

I like to think of it something like a butterfly emerging from a chrysalis. It doesn’t need its caterpillar appearance any more. It doesn’t need the chrysalis. It would look absurd if it tried to hold on to its old “house” while flying around with its beautiful new wings. Whatever we relinquish here, we won’t need in heaven. As C. S. Lewis wrote in Letters to an American Lady, “There are better things ahead than any we leave behind.”

And those who know God have his promises in our old age:

• “So we do not lose heart. Though our outer self is wasting away, our inner self is being renewed day by day. For this light momentary affliction is preparing for us an eternal weight of glory beyond all comparison, as we look not to the things that are seen but to the things that are unseen. For the things that are seen are transient, but the things that are unseen are eternal (2 Corinthians 4:16-18).
• “For we know that if the tent that is our earthly home is destroyed, we have a building from God, a house not made with hands, eternal in the heavens. For in this tent we groan, longing to put on our heavenly dwelling, if indeed by putting it on we may not be found naked. For while we are still in this tent, we groan, being burdened—not that we would be unclothed, but that we would be further clothed, so that what is mortal may be swallowed up by life. He who has prepared us for this very thing is God, who has given us the Spirit as a guarantee (2 Corinthians 5:1-5).
• “Even to your old age I am he, and to gray hairs I will carry you. I have made, and I will bear; I will carry and will save” (Isaiah 46:4).
• “But I trust in you, O Lord; I say, ‘You are my God.’ My times are in your hand” (Psalm 31:14-15a)
• “My flesh and my heart may fail, but God is the strength of my heart and my portion forever” (Psalm 73:26).
• “They still bear fruit in old age; they are ever full of sap and green, to declare that the Lord is upright; he is my rock, and there is no unrighteousness in him (Psalm 92:14-15).

When we took care of my husband’s mother, she slept most of her last two years. I wondered how this verse played out in her life–how was she still bearing fruit in that condition? Part of it was her testimony all her life until that time. Part of it was her lack of complaining and her willingness to undergo whatever she had to. And part of it was the peace that hospice workers and caregivers sensed when they came to see her.

I’ve often been inspired by the poem from William Newton Clarke:

Gone, they tell me, is youth.
Gone is the strength of my life:
Nothing remains but decline,
Nothing but age and decay.

Not so, I’m God’s little child,
Only beginning to live;
Coming the years of my prime,
Coming the strength of my life;
Coming the vision of God,
Coming my bloom and my power.

To be sure, I still don’t look forward to the process of death or the decline that leads to it. The Bible calls death the last enemy (1 Corinthians 15:26), so it’s right to think of it as such.

And I don’t mean to give the impression that aging is all negative. There is a settledness that comes with aging. We don’t know everything, of course, but some of the issues we wrestled with in younger years are no longer a problem. Our limitations make it clearer what we can and can’t do, so it’s easier to make choices and to say no when we need to. We’ve developed some degree of wisdom by walking with the Lord for so many decades. We don’t need to go at the driven pace we used to.

We’ve experienced a few of these relinquishments. We hope to escape some of them and we hope that others are two or three decades away. We’ve talked about various scenarios that might play out in our final years–if he should go first, if I should, if one or the other of us needs more care than the other can give. We’ve shared our preferences, but, truly, we may not have any control when the time comes.

But whatever happens when, God promises His grace through it. We don’t have grace for it now because we don’t need it yet. Until then, each reminder that I have an expiration date spurs me to make the most of the time I have left. I pray along with the psalmist, “So even to old age and gray hairs, O God, do not forsake me, until I proclaim your might to another generation, your power to all those to come” (Psalm 71:15).

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