Therefore, strengthen your feeble arms and weak knees…Hebrews 12:11

I recently had breakfast with three friends and as they spoke of their aging parents (I could not participate in the conversation as both my parents are deceased) I began to envision their frustrations and concerns of caring for an aging parent to a conversation my daughters will one day have about me. Coming to grips with this whole aging process has not been easy.  If I am blessed to live one more day that means growing old. Our Father-God-Creator has set it up so that in the process of “living” we will pass through seasonal growing-old spurts until He returns or we sputter out!

I can’t stop the physical process of aging but I can certainly determine how I’m going to accept it, roll with it, and adjust accordingly! That means not only accepting the physical changes but the psychological as well. Just going from crawling to walking requires an amazing psychological acceptance of new found freedom and capabilities that a child did not have just one day before. What is it that keeps a baby willing to get up and try one more time after falling down for the skatey-eighth time? What makes a child persevere to stay upright on their bike without the training wheels? Life is a series of growth spurts that propel us into our next season of…living! Crawling to walking to running is a natural progression of the constant need to advance and move forward.

Most are content in this norm of progression, but some take it to a level of competition first against their own capabilities to being faster or stronger but then they’re challenged to become fastest and strongest competing against other’s skills and successes.

They don’t hand out gold medals for growing old and I have never been physically competitive even against my own capabilities. Except for dieting and striving to control my blood sugars I don’t think I have ever “challenged” myself to be better at anything that requires muscle propulsion. I get in a pool to swim or the treadmill to walk, but my idea of “rising to the challenge” was getting out of my recliner; rarely ever progressing to the next level. This writing had started out to be about accepting my limitations and to humbly utilize the necessary assistive devices to aid in my activities of daily living i.e. my Rolator Walker allowing me to sit during painful mall-walking or a Sock-aid for putting on my socks. (It works rather well for someone who can’t bend far enough to put on their socks!). I have been giving in to the aches and pains of aging that keep me immobile and stationary, warding off any possible injury or most assuredly, pain. But as I wrote about babies willing themselves to walk into life and olympians pushing to a new world record I have found myself desiring this same fortitude. There is a fine line between *surrender and *resolve and I seem to be vacillating somewhere between them; wanting to use a seated walker to allow more freedom from being a recluse to actually strengthening the legs, back, and hips eliminating its use altogether–at least for a time.

I truly believe that one day I will have to resign myself to these assistive devices and, hopefully, accept and appreciate them gracefully, but that day is not today! I want to begin a training program for a 67-year-old diabetic, back issued, recliner-hugger that will prepare me for the next season of my life…entering my seventies (70’s)! I want to reverse my diabetes, lose weight, strengthen my back, legs, hips, and arms and be more limber and agile. I want to challenge myself, first to be smart enough to involve others who can help and then follow their directives in becoming faster, stronger, and healthier. I want to honor God with my body and I want to put on my own socks! “Let the games begin!”

No discipline seems pleasant at the time, but painful. Later on, however, it produces a harvest of righteousness and peace for those who have been trained by it. Therefore, strengthen your feeble arms and weak knees. “Make level paths for your feet,” so that the lame may not be disabled, but rather healed. Hebrews 12:11

Therefore, I urge you, brothers and sisters, in view of God’s mercy, to offer your bodies as a living sacrifice, holy and pleasing to God—this is your true and proper worship. Do not conform to the pattern of this world, but be transformed by the renewing of your mind. Then you will be able to test and approve what God’s will is—his good, pleasing and perfect will. Romans 12:1-2

Who is like the wise? Who knows the explanation of things? A person’s wisdom brightens their face and changes its hard appearance. Ecclesiastes 8:1

* Surrender – to agree, stop fighting, hiding, resisting, etc. because you know that you will not win or succeed. b. To give up completely or agree to forgo especially in favor of another

Resolve – to find an answer or solution to (something): to settle or solve (something): to make a definite and serious decision to do something

“Insanity is doing the same thing over and over and expecting a different result” Albert Einstein