So we do not lose heart. Though our outer self is wasting away, our inner self is being renewed day by day. (2 Corinthians 4:16)

Even in old age they will still produce fruit; they will remain vital and green. (Psalm 92:14)

Steve Miller Band’s famous song, Fly Like an Eagle, seems to depict the way Greg and I feel any more about most of our days. The first two verses resonate loudly through the depths of our day-to-day lives, “Time keeps on slippin’, slippin’, slippin’ into the future,” and as that time keeps on slippin’ by, we are getting older, older, older…

Webster’s definition of age is: (1) “to become old: to show the effects or characteristics of increasing age. (2)To bring to a state fit for use or to maturity.” I can definitely relate to the first definition. I find that my once vibrant body that bounced back quickly from a hard workout or a grueling day of yardwork, no longer has that bounce-back that it used to.

I find the second definition from above humorous and also quite true. True because in many aspects, maturity brings with it the state of being “fit for use,” we definitely know more about life with age, but humorous because if we have to get old before we are “fit for use” then all those years of endless energy and momentum are truly wasted in our youth.

Needless to say, I believe that God can and will use us at any stage of our life if we are receptive to His leading, but I do take great comfort in knowing that He did often use what we today, would consider the elderly, for many wonderful things. Wonderful things both big and small. From where I am in my life, I get it. We learn a lot from life in those years between birth and our 50’s, 60’s, and so on.

God is more concerned about our character and our heart than He is our gray hairs and wrinkles.

Aging, per se, really never used to bother me. Now, let me be clear, as a woman, I would be lying if I said I was not always aware of physical changes to my body with age, and at various times those changes would affect me mentally, I might get depressed temporarily, but it wasn’t something that stayed in the forefront of my mind, nor did I necessarily connect it to the fact that I was “aging.”

In fact, I would say most of my life, I took comfort in knowing that aging did not bother me. I always thought older people were beautiful. I see such beauty in their lines, knowing there were amazing stories behind each one, earned through hard times, pain, joy, and laughter.

Aging was not something that consumed my thoughts or something I ever fixated on. I just tried to be the best I could at each age and stage of life, but I was never one to always be looking in the mirror, primping myself, or checking for lines or gray hairs. Those things just did not bother me. I looked at the things that accompany aging as a rite of passage.

My routine was such that I got ready in the morning and left for work and did not look in a mirror the rest of the day unless there was one in a restroom while I was washing my hands, or, on some rare occasion that I needed to freshen up because of the heat, or rain, or I had a presentation for work. Point being, as I said above, it honestly was just not something that bothered me, a new gray hair, a little brown spot here, a new wrinkle there…so what? I don’t ever remember being bothered by “oldness.”

But then in 2020, COVID changed everything!

The mind game that COVID has played on so many of us is beyond anything I think any of us could have ever imagined. Depression rates across all generations is off the charts. Plastic surgeons say there has been an unbelievable increase in invasive cosmetic surgeries and non-invasive procedures. Suicide rates are higher than ever. Addiction rates have skyrocketed.

COVID shined a light on so many areas of life where we as a society, and we as individuals are broken and where we have gotten it all so wrong, and for me, personally, COVID has really negatively impacted me about my own aging. It’s not at all that I fear aging. It is the fact that I have become aware of the process.

It has become a battle in my mind that I never anticipated.

Never in my life have I spent as much time looking at myself as I have the past few years. We have to be on camera for my work, and while I can change some settings to make myself less “present” on the screen, I am still there. Never have I been sitting, looking at myself all day like I am now because of this crazy virtual world we are living in these days.

As the days, months, and now years have passed and we are still working this way, slowly the awareness of a wrinkle here, and three more there, and my eyelids aren’t as perky as they used to be, and so on has crept in and created an overwhelming sadness and borderline fixation on just how much and how fast I am aging. Now I am even more aware of just how fast, “Time keeps on slippin’, slippin’, slippin’ into the future!”

This unhealthy fixation was really starting to get to me, and it was beginning to depress me, make me unhappy and uncomfortable with myself, and uncomfortable around others in ways I have never experienced before. It was even beginning to creep into the way I felt around my husband, always wondering when he was looking at me, does he look at me and see what I see on the screen? Does he see the flaws of which I now am so keenly aware?

Knowing I couldn’t stay on this downward spiral of emotions and negative self-talk I took it to God. I had to give it to Him because I did not want to live in this “space,” of self-absorption and fixation on things that I could neither control, nor stop, but more importantly things that do not make me who God made me to be, nor display the qualities of Christ.

But the fruit of the Spirit is love, joy, peace, forbearance, kindness, goodness, faithfulness, gentleness, and self-control. Against such things there is no law. (Galatians 5:22-23)

When we are led by The Holy Spirit, the above qualities should be what people see when they see us. These should outshine and override anything of our physical appearance. These are the things we should focus on, more so than our physical bodies which are slowly dying.

These qualities that we can have through the Holy Spirit, will never age, or die, and they are defined biblically a bit differently than how they are defined by the world.

Love, from the Greek term agapé, is selfless love, a love that puts others over self.
Joy, from the Greek chara, does not necessarily imply happiness, but biblically, it’s best described as an inner confidence. Because of who we are in Christ, we have a supernatural peace in all circumstance.
Peace, in biblical terms involves emotions such as assurance, and spiritual calmness.
Patience, is the ability to endure hardships, or to “weather the storms.”
Kindness, seems simple, but it’s not always easy to be kind to challenging people. With The Holy Spirit’s help, we can be kind to challenging and offensive people.
Goodness, or the term agathosyne, implies a moral decency and describes someone who is respectable, honorable, and righteous.
Faithfulness, from the Greek term pistis, represents a kind of endurance, driven by trust.

The list above, those are the qualities God considers important for our character. Nowhere does He mention wrinkle free, no gray hair, or must maintain youthful appearance.

God is more concerned about our character and our heart than He is our gray hairs and wrinkles.

photo by Sharon McCutcheon @sharonmccutcheon

The ‘irony,” for lack of a better term, is that my faith was really growing when COVID started. I had started to share my faith more publicly through my writing. I led a couple of on-line Bible studies. I was mentoring some ladies. I had committed to read the Bible in a year. I was going deeper, craving more, and wanting to share all the blessings I was gaining through spending more time in God’s word.

Isn’t it just like our adversary to try to derail us when we are going deeper in our faith, sharing it out to others, and isn’t it just like him to use something so subtle, and yet so personal, to completely take our focus off of God and turn it all towards self?

Isn’t it just like our enemy to send us chasing after things of this world, things we can never hold in our grasp, things that keep us so busy that we don’t have time for God, or things that make us feel so insecure we isolate ourselves, even from God or fellow believers who could lift us up?

Reality is, we cannot stop the aging process, and to waste time chasing youth in however many years I am blessed to have, would be a sin and a tremendous disrespect to the God who made me, and has blessed me with the life I have here and now, wrinkles and all.

One morning when I was praying, God put the following analogy on my heart about aging that gave me such a beautiful picture of the process. I was sitting in the chair near a window where I have several beautiful orchids. Each one is unique in its size, its color pattern, its growth pattern, and its stage of growth.

My smallest orchid was dropping its petals, while one was just preparing to bud, one was dormant, and the other was blooming these amazingly beautiful flowers. While I watched some petals fall, it occurred to me that is the flowers way of aging, and it has to go through the process of dropping its petals because part of the old needs to go so the next round of beauty can blossom.

It made me curious. So, I did some research on orchids and found that orchids are a perennial. Perennials, live for three or more growing seasons. They grow back from roots that go dormant. Because they will be around from year to year they put their energy into growing strong roots instead of growing lots of flowers like annuals do.

It made me think, that much like perennials, we have to age in order to gain all the blessings (or more blooms) that come with time, like wisdom and discernment. Like perennials we too should put our efforts and energy into growing strong roots, deep roots of faith where those nine characteristics, love, joy, peace, patience, kindness, goodness, and faithfulness, or the “fruit of the Spirit,” (meaning the qualities of Christ) can be seen blooming, growing, and are being lived out for as long as we are blessed with breath in our lungs.

If we chase beauty by the world’s standards, we may have a window of time where we are beautiful by the world’s standards, but our roots will be shallow, and we’ll have nothing but misery when we realize we cannot stop the aging process. But, if we develop strong roots, as the scriptures say, our inner self will be renewed day by day, and even when we are old because our foundation is strong, we will still produce fruit and remain vital and green.

Aging is a beautiful gift from God.

God has given us an opportunity to share what we have learned from our many days on this earth, to help others still growing and learning the ways of this world. The knowledge and wisdom we have gained over the years is like a secret treasure to those needing a little sage advice. We have been allowed to share our experiences as teachable moments for the generations to come. Each of these privileges are a blessing in and of itself!

Heavenly Father,
Thank you for the gift of aging. Help us to be grateful and count it as the blessing that it is, and may we not see it as a curse, or something to try and fight. Father, give us grace for ourselves and others as our bodies begin to show the wear and tear of life. May our roots grow deep and strong so that all who know us see You as we live out the fruits of the spirit. In Jesus name, Amen

Reference used for Fruit of the Spirit-Galatians-5-22

watching petals fall

God is more concerned about our character and our heart than He is our gray hairs and wrinkles.

But the fruit of the Spirit is love, joy, peace, forbearance, kindness, goodness, faithfulness, gentleness, and self-control. Against such things there is no law. (Galatians 5:22-23)

Love, from the Greek term agapé, is selfless love, a love that puts others over self.

Joy, from the Greek chara, does not necessarily imply happiness, but biblically, it’s best described as an inner confidence. Because of who we are in Christ, we have a supernatural peace in all circumstance.

Peace, in biblical terms involves emotions such as assurance, and spiritual calmness.

Patience, is the ability to endure hardships, or to “weather the storms.”

Kindness, seems simple, but it’s not always easy to be kind to challenging people. With The Holy Spirit’s help, we can be kind to challenging and offensive people.

Goodness, or the term agathosyne, implies a moral decency and describes someone who is respectable, honorable, and righteous.

Faithfulness, from the Greek term pistis, represents a kind of endurance, driven by trust.

The list above, those are the qualities God considers important for our character. Nowhere does He mention wrinkle free, no gray hair, or must maintain youthful appearance.

God is more concerned about our character and our heart than He is our gray hairs and wrinkles.

Aging is a beautiful gift from God.

watching petals fall

God is more concerned about our character and our heart than He is our gray hairs and wrinkles.

But the fruit of the Spirit is love, joy, peace, forbearance, kindness, goodness, faithfulness, gentleness, and self-control. Against such things there is no law. (Galatians 5:22-23)

Love, from the Greek term agapé, is selfless love, a love that puts others over self.

Joy, from the Greek chara, does not necessarily imply happiness, but biblically, it’s best described as an inner confidence. Because of who we are in Christ, we have a supernatural peace in all circumstance.

Peace, in biblical terms involves emotions such as assurance, and spiritual calmness.

Patience, is the ability to endure hardships, or to “weather the storms.”

Kindness, seems simple, but it’s not always easy to be kind to challenging people. With The Holy Spirit’s help, we can be kind to challenging and offensive people.

Goodness, or the term agathosyne, implies a moral decency and describes someone who is respectable, honorable, and righteous.

Faithfulness, from the Greek term pistis, represents a kind of endurance, driven by trust.

The list above, those are the qualities God considers important for our character. Nowhere does He mention wrinkle free, no gray hair, or must maintain youthful appearance.

God is more concerned about our character and our heart than He is our gray hairs and wrinkles.

Aging is a beautiful gift from God.

they’re all around us!

love moved first