.jpg)
I spent last night with four ladies who have lived through both World Wars and everything else since before there were telephones. On the eve of my birthday I was blessed to be in the company of women who are each drawing near to a century of life on this planet.
Frank and several other residents of the nursing home where my small group from church was visiting asked me if I had just moved in. It’s a reasonable question because I’m in a wheelchair and probably am getting kind of wrinkly since today is my fortieth birthday.
However, then I met Betty who shares a birthday with me and is turning 91 today. Standing spritely behind her walker she said, “Hon, you haven’t even lived half your life yet!”
And I met Marge with her perfect silver curls who rejoiced, “I know exactly where I’m going when I leave this place. I don’t know what it will be like, but it will be really good.”
Then she looked deep into me with her shining eyes and whispered, “It will be wonderful because our God is sooo loving.”
Pat told us about how her sweetheart after being injured in the war was told he wouldn’t be able to have children and wanted to spare her from that fate. She told him, “You’re not getting out of this love affair that easy,” followed him to California, and promptly birthed three boys with him in the first few years of their marriage.
Kathleen quietly held hands with us after we painted her nails, stroked my friends’ blooming baby bellies, and then joked about three quarters of our group being knocked up.
Ellie giggled as I massaged her hands with lotion and said that her new red nail polish made her feel so special.
Each woman had a handful of children and grandchildren numbering in the dozens, and I was humbled to be in their presence. Pat told me she has a seventy year old son, and she doesn’t know how that happened because she feels way to young at ninety to have a son who is already retired. She lost her childhood sweetheart when he was seventy, and has missed him every day for the past two decades. Her eyes glistened as she told me how hard it has been and then turned to laughter as she gave me her neatly wrapped cake from the cafeteria for my birthday.
I think after last night I am ready for the second half of my life or however many days the Lord may give me. I think I am ready in whatever way they may come.
And I think the best gift I have been given this year is to feel very very small and incredibly beloved.
I think this is what I will pursue and surrender to for the rest of my life… any experience that will allow me to feel the freedom there is in being a very small part of a incredibly large story, and anything that breathes our God’s love and joy deep into my soul.
- We snapped a photo while her nails were still drying, and I know she looks scared of me, but I promise you she’s my new best friend and she asked me how her nails looked in the pic 😉
