Some Days a...What?

"What are you doing down there?" My husband and Brother Zerkle are standing in the church house door...

"Oh, nothing, I always sit in mud puddles for the fun of it!" To say that I'm not real happy would be an understatement, and a dopey question like that didn't help.

We have driven 900 miles to visit this congregation trying to determine if this is where my husband wants to go to preaching school, and what a start!

First, our almost two year old has a smelly 'accident' in the only pair of breeches we brought to church. Then after services, as I attempt to deal with this wiggling, non-co-operative child, I miss the one low step on the way out the door and we go rolling and end up in...that's right, we end up sitting in a small puddle of water. And along comes my dear husband and Brother Zerkle. The humor catches up with me, and I start to laugh, but not before Brother Z disappears-- rather quickly.

Some days it seems like the only way to go is up.

1Corinthians 10:12 Wherefore let him that thinketh he standeth take heed lest he fall.

It is crisp out side, and I walk briskly on my morning walk. I like to use my trusty walking stick--an old hoe handle without the hoe--I move over the rough gravel in the drive way easier that way. Two days ago I didn't move so quickly. No, the weather was just as invigorating, but each piece of gravel seemed like a mountain I had to climb, either over, or around. The walking stick didn't just encourage me to keep up, it pulled me along--one step at a time.

Each day is different, some days you just have to be versatile. But it's hard. And it gets harder.

"When I turned fifty," my grandfather says, "the day I turned fifty--I could tell a difference. I just couldn't do things quite the same as before."

That was the same fellow that was still making and repairing fence at eighty-five. He was a farmer and a 'farrier' as long as I knew him, and didn't retire from shoeing horses until he was about eighty years old, but...he slowed down when he was fifty.

"I think when you are used to doing things at double time speed--slowing down is really hard on the psyche. I suddenly don't understand--why. Why I can't get everything done...why things are harder to do...why other folks don't understand that things are different...for me than things used to be. And if it's hard for me to understand, no wonder these folks don't understand--but they will--in a few years.

The way things are today doesn't allow people to be different from one day to the next. Not really. You are either young--or old; not young-- and old. You are either 'with it' or you are 'out of it'. If retirement begins at sixty-five, when you turn fifty you have fifteen years to cope with being young--and old, in a young-- or old world.

Psalms 37:25 I have been young, and now am old; Yet have I not seen the righteous forsaken, Nor his seed begging bread.

As Christians in a non-christian world, we know that we don't fear growing older. We are learning to lean on, and trust the in Lord. Something that apparently comes only through trials and tribulations.

I think I'm listening as the speaker is speaking, then he says, "Don't pray for humility."
"Ha," I nudge my husband, "I'm so humble now I can hardly stand it. Why would I pray for more?"

Without a moment's pause he replies, "I don't think that's the kind of humility he's talking about."

Psalms 37:24 Though he fall, he shall not be utterly cast down; For Jehovah upholdeth him with his hand.

"I suppose you're right," I say with a sigh. I'm still of the opinion I'm not going to pray for humility...life seems to have a way of teaching me...humility...without praying for it.

Psalms 37:39 But the salvation of the righteous is of Jehovah; He is their stronghold in the time of trouble.

Hallelujah! What a Savior!