Treasures in jars of clay

NOTE: This is the final installment of a seven-part series on AGING WITH GRACE.
     
So we have this treasure in jars of clay. – 2 Corinthians 4:7 (NIV)
         
Every day we’re urged to be one of the “beautiful people.” TV ads advise us to purchase expensive exercise equipment. Ever notice that the men and women demonstrating how easy it is to lose weight don’t have to? Look at the covers of women’s magazines as you stand in line at the checkout counter, and you’ll see the titles of the articles inside deal with basically the same topics: “Watch those pounds melt off” (yeah, right) or “Eat all the chocolate you want and still lose weight” (in your dreams) or “Beauty Makeovers” (why does it never happen to me?).
     
If having an attractive, sleek body is what being beautiful is all about, how, then, can you be beautiful in your senior years, when your body is slowly, as Paul put it two millennia ago, “wasting away”? When this “jar of clay” lets you down. When your energy wanes, and you can’t do as much as you used to. When reading glasses are a necessary part of your wardrobe. When you have to watch what you eat because certain foods will haunt you in the middle of the night. When every year you not only celebrate your birthday, but you mark the breakdown of one more part of you.

Or is beauty something deeper – an inner radiance that shows on your face and in your behavior and attitude? A zest for life that can’t be quenched.
     
People who possess this quality energize everyone they meet. I once knew a man who went deep sea fishing when he was in his 90s. He lived full tilt, gardening, canning, baking bread, selling homegrown blueberries and locally produced chocolate candy. I used to tease him that he thought the speed limit was his age. But he loved people and he loved life. His body was aging, but his spirit was beautiful. 
     
This,then, is the fifth secret to aging with grace: Enthusiasm – possessing a spirit of excitement that enables you to face each day, each thing you do, with eagerness, interest and energy.
     
While we have little, if any, control over the aging process, enthusiasm is something we can cultivate. The word itself comes from a Greek word that means to be “inspired” and “possessed by a god.” The Bible tells us to be enthusiastic all that we do: “Whatever your hand finds to do, do it with all your might” (Ecclesiastes 9:10). “Whatever you do, work at with all your heart” (Colossians 3:23).
     
The key to having enthusiasm is to give yourself daily to the one and only God. His Spirit living within you gives you eternal life, inspires you, and fills you with eagerness, excitement and energy. The Spirit of God is the treasure you carry in your jar of clay. 
   
Thank you, God, for those people I meet that brighten my day with their enthusiasm. Fill me with Your Spirit so that my excitement for living will energize and encourage those around me. Amen.

Special-Tea: Read 2 Corinthians 4:7-5:6

This too shall pass

NOTE: This is the sixth of a seven-part series on AGING WITH GRACE.

Be content with what you have, because God has said, “Never will I leave you; never will I forsake you.” – Hebrews 13:5 (NIV)

Thirty years ago we moved from an apartment to an unfinished basement 13 miles from town. The money we paid for rent, we reasoned, would be better spent on the house we were building. Our oldest child was four and our baby daughter was 11 months old. Boxes, clothes and toys cluttered every square foot of that concrete cubicle. The furnace needed repair. It was mid-November, and winter was closing in fast. A constant fire in the woodstove did little to warm up the concrete surrounding us. Insulating the place was still on our to-do list. I wore long underwear, a toboggan hat and layers of clothing indoors.

The plumbing was still unfinished, so we hooked up a garden hose to the water tank and fed it through a hole in the wall above the bathtub. Lugging pots of hot water from the kitchen, I flooded the bathroom floor twice. My back ached from sleeping on an old, lumpy sofa bed mattress. Our comfortable queen-size bed was stored in the wagon shed until we made room for it.

“Why can’t I have nice things the easy way like everyone else?” I grumbled after three days of disorganization, interruptions and things gone wrong. “Why am I always a ‘have-not’ and never a ‘have’?”

My husband tried to cheer me up. “It’s only temporary,” he said.

Then, before the first week was up, an early snowstorm dumped six inches on the countryside overnight. Every two hours I bundled up even more and shoveled swirling drifts away from the only door. Flinging wet, heavy snow over my shoulder, I gave in to self-pity.

“Temporary, temporary,” I fumed. “Is everything temporary?”

The answer came immediately: Even if you had everything exactly the way you wanted, it would still be temporary.

This is the fifth secret to aging with grace: Being content in your circumstances because you know that whatever your earthly condition, it’s only temporary. Contentment is the antidote to unhappiness, envy, worry, fear, discontentment, grumbling and bitterness.

That’s not to say I don’t feel envy and discontent at times. But I fight it by focusing, not on the things I can see, but on the things I can’t, because “what is seen is temporary, but what is unseen is eternal” (2 Corinthians 4:18). Why get all stirred up about something that isn’t going to last? I’ve learned that with God’s help, I can make it through anything by fixing my eyes on what is permanent:  God, His Word, His promises, His presence, His protection, His provision, His love, His gifts of eternal life and a home in Heaven with Him forever. 

            With God, I have everything.

            Lord, help me to remember that whatever my earthly condition – whether rich, poor, or in between – is only temporary. Remind me daily what’s really important. Amen.

Special-Tea: Read 2 Corinthians 4:16-18           

Straight A's in aging

This is the fifth of a seven-part series on AGING WITH GRACE.
   
For I have learned, in whatever state I am, to be content. – Philippians 4:11 (NKJV)
  
In preparation for an upcoming speakers’ seminar, I completed a personality profile. The strengths section was fairly easy. Determining my weaknesses, though, was a different story. None of the four choices for each of the 20 lines seemed to fit me. I’d think, “I used to be this way, but I’m not anymore.”
    
My personality type? The “perfect melancholy.”
  
Schedule-oriented, orderly and organized, the perfect melancholy is a detail person, persistent, thorough, accurate, and sincere. PMs are good with planning, explaining the facts, and keeping the records straight, but can get lost in the details and become too easily distracted and critical.
  
My husband, on the other hand, is a “peaceful phlegmatic.” A support person, this personality type is good at staying calm and functional amid chaos, and not overreacting to a negative situation. While the perfect melancholy needs order and understanding, the peaceful phlegmatic craves rest and quiet.
   
Imagine someone who wants everything perfect living with someone for whom the details don’t matter. The uptight living with the easygoing. I run late because I have to fold the quilt on the sofa, fluff the throw pillows, take the hanger off the bed, empty the dehumidifier and put everything in its place. I want to walk into a perfect house when I come home. Hubby, though, doesn’t care what the place looks like when he comes in (just have supper ready, please) but wants to be on time for things.
    
Knowing my personality type has helped me to accept myself the way God created me. And recognizing my husband’s personality type has given me insight into what makes him tick. Our marriage has lasted 37 years because we’ve learned to adapt to each other and to circumstances.
    
This is the fourth secret to aging with grace: accepting yourself and others the way you were created and adapting to situations that come into your life, especially ones  that cannot be changed.
    
Both Joseph and Paul found themselves in prison, not because of anything they’d done wrong but because of what they did right. To survive, they learned to accept and adapt. The key to accepting, adapting, and learning to be content with what you hadn’t planned and didn’t want, is knowing that you are not the one in control – God is.
    
When I took the personality profile, I realized how much God had been working in my life, changing me. I hadn’t thought I’d changed at all. But God used hard times, unchanging circumstances, and difficult people to change me. Iron sharpening iron. Painful – but productive.
    
Lord, give me the serenity to accept the things I cannot change, the courage to change the things I can, and the wisdom to know the difference. Amen. (From “The Prayer of Serenity”)     
 

Special-Tea: Read Philippians 4:11-13

Tickle your funny bone

How to Age with Grace, Part 4
    
However many years a man may live, let him enjoy them all. – Ecclesiastes 11:8 (NIV)

I was a fun-loving child. I created ridiculous skits to make others laugh, played impractical jokes and looked for ways to make everything I did fun. Once I put salt in the sugar bowl and sugar in the salt shaker, then crouched under the table to enjoy the reaction of my unsuspecting victim – which happened to be my mother, and her reaction was enough to convince me not to do that again!
    
I even found ways to make church fun – for me, anyway. I attended a Catholic grade school, and we started the day with Mass every morning. We first graders sat right up front, close to the statue of Mary. The statue, I thought, made a great target for my best friend’s mittens. After a couple mitten-tossing episodes, Sister Bertrille, my teacher, decided it would be better if I sat beside her. But when eyes were closed and heads were bent in prayer, I’d reach under the pew and pull off the shoes of the person kneeling in front of me. Back then, paddling was acceptable, and I made many trips to the supply room, where such discipline was administered. For me the fun and laughter were worth the risk of a sore bottom.
    
Although my way of finding fun was often impractical and annoying, I inherently knew the secret to surviving life: Find the fun in everything. A healthy sense of humor is life’s best shock absorber.
    
This is the third secret to aging with grace: Finding joy in every day, in every circumstance. Joy is a choice.
    
Studies have shown that healthy laughter affects our bodies in positive ways: It stimulates the “feel good” chemicals in our brains, burns calories, gives our faces a healthy glow (from the increased blood flow), reduces symptoms of stress, boosts our immune system, increases the oxygen flowing through our systems, helps to keep glucose levels in check, reduces clotting and inflammation in the blood vessels, increases our tolerance for pain and, with all the muscles engaged when we laugh, acts as good exercise. Convalescing patients who watch funny movies or shows, such as “The Three Stooges” or “I Love Lucy,” and spend time engaging in good, belly-shaking, tear-producing laughter, recuperate more quickly than those who do not.
    
The Bible tells us that “a cheerful heart is good medicine” (Proverbs 17:22), “a happy heart makes the face cheerful (Proverbs 15:13), and “the cheerful heart has a continual feast” (Proverbs 15:15).
    
So choose joy. Choose to think positive thoughts, to say encouraging words, to laugh instead of get angry. Choose to look for fun.

Go ahead--tickle your funny bone!
    
“There are souls in this world which have the gift of finding joy everywhere and leaving it behind them when they go” (Frederick Faber).  Lord, may I be such a soul! Amen.

Special-Tea: Read Philippians 4:4-9

Join me at the Seasons of Life Christian Women’s Conference at the Punxsutawney First Church of God on Oct.16, from 9 a.m.-3 p.m. Tickets, which are $20, include lunch and must be purchased by Oct. 11. Benefits Punxsutawney Christian School. For tickets, call PCS at 814-938-2295 or email me at michelehuey@yahoo.com For more information, visit the conference blog at http://seasonsoflifecwc.blogspot.com  

Hush hour

Part 3 of my "Aging with Grace" series


Special-Tea: John 15:5-8
    
Even to your old age and gray hairs I am he, I am he who will sustain you. I have made you and I will carry you. – Isaiah 46:4 (NIV)
    
One of the things I like about teaching school is summer vacation. It isn’t so much that I get to sleep in because I try to keep the same wake-sleep schedule as I have during the school year. It’s the expanded quiet time for devotions that I most enjoy.

From September to June I’m lucky to have a half an hour a day to read my Bible and pray, let alone delve into spiritual growth books, work through an in-depth Bible study and keep a spiritual journal. I don’t even think about those “read the Bible in one year” schedules. I simply don’t have the time. My prayers are usually said during the half-hour drive to work. And I just don’t have the energy?mentally or physically ?in the evening to attend Bible study, as much as I want to.

During the summer, however, I have no reason to get out the door at a certain time. Taking at least two hours for devotions, for me, is the next thing to heaven. Perhaps that’s one reason I feel so good during the summer?I’m not so fatigued or stressed. Blanketing the day with prayer and plunging deeply into the Word help me to cope when life comes at me fast.
    
In their book The Graying of America, Donald H. and Barry C. Kauser note that people with faith tend to live longer: “Does religion actually serve to improve the health of elderly people? Over 10 years of studies at various universities have indicated that … people who have a deep religious faith seem to get sick less often and get better faster when they do get sick than people with much less religious faith. Those with a strong religious faith have also been found to have lower rates of heart disease, stroke and cancer.”
  
Scientific studies are showing that prayer can be a great healer, reducing stress and boosting the immune system. One study of AIDS patients found that the frequency of prayer was significantly related to longer survival.
  
“It seemed that people for whom religion had played a major role throughout their lives were aging better than those who weren’t religious,” one researcher noted.
  
Aging with grace, then, involves not only keeping active mentally and physically, but also taking your relationship with God to a higher and deeper level through prayer, and reading, studying and meditating on Scripture.
    
Retirement for me is still a ways off, but I sure look forward to the day when rush hour becomes hush hour.                                            
  
Lord, no matter how busy I am, remind me to spend time with You every day. Amen.

Join me at the Seasons of Life Christian Women’s Conference at the Punxsutawney First Church of God on Oct.16, from 9 a.m.-3 p.m. Tickets, which are $20, include lunch and must be purchased by Oct. 11. Benefits Punxsutawney Christian School. For tickets, call PCS at 814-938-2295 or email me at michelehuey@yahoo.com For more information, visit the conference blog at http://seasonsoflifecwc.blogspot.com