Aging with Dignity

There is a woman who attends our church and lives in a senior housing apartment complex. She organizes a weekly Bible study and invites different pastors in to teach it. I have been one of the participants. She puts the schedule out quarterly so generally I've been scheduled once a month. I recently asked her if it would be possible to do three weeks in a row so that I could do a continuous study rather than teaching three disjointed lessons over a three month period.

Yesterday, I taught the final lesson in my three week series. It ended up being such a meaningful time with them as they shared their stories with me and the tears flowed. I was able to pray with them and connect in a way that I've never done before. As I closed out our time with prayer I actually got choked up.

The thing that amazes me is that I've never felt that I would have the patience or ability to work with senior citizens. And yet, over the past 8 years God has given me a special affinity for them. I'm not sure if it's due to having dealt with senior parents and being involved in their care or if it has to do with having many seniors in the churches we've served in. Or perhaps, it's just a natural thing that happens as I age and start to empathize much more as my body changes. But whatever it is, I find that I actually am enjoying the times I am with them. I barrel through my days doing a hundred things, but the time spent with seniors actually causes me to slow down and stay in the moment. I can almost feel my brain relax.

On Monday, I took my 90-year-old father-in-law to visit my mother-in-law's grave. We also wandered around, looking at the different headstones and I read them outloud and we wondered about their lives. Then I took him out to lunch. His personality is a challenge and his eating habits leave much to be desired, but I actually had a nice time with him.

We live in a society that seems to cast away the elderly. We ignore them. We get irritated by them. We think they are irrelevant and snap at them and treat them with impatience.  And yet, so many of them still have much to offer. God doesn't think they are irrelevant. Some have wisdom that they can offer and they have life experiences from which we can learn. We can also give them dignity as they enter the end of their life, and we can offer kindness in a world that is often unkind to the elderly.

Not everyone who is elderly has lived a good life and there are some who have personality traits that get worse as they age. However, I try to treat them the way I would want to be treated no matter how irritating they may be. How I treat them says more about what type of person I am rather than what type of person they are or have been. 

And as I engage with some who seem to be constantly negative and complaining, it's a reminder to me to age with dignity. To hone the positive character-traits that I have so that I don't end up being a senior no one wants to be around. And for the complainers that I come across I keep trying to point them to the good things in their life so that they can end their time on this earth with some hope and peace.

I like to hope that I will be a senior who offers some wisdom and encouragement to the younger generations that come after me. I want to have a purpose until I take my final breath and end my life knowing that I used up every bit of the life God has given me. 

"When I stand before God at the end of my life, I would hope that I would not have a single bit of talent left, and could say,   'I used everything you gave me.'" 

~ Erma Bombeck