Embracing Getting Older
There is a wisdom that comes with age. We gain knowledge and experience, but more importantly, we gain perspective, the ability to hold many viewpoints, draw from lived experience, think beyond the present, and respond with greater compassion and understanding.
There is also a quiet brilliance that unfolds as we grow older, especially when we embrace aging instead of resisting it, when we celebrate the depth of our insight instead of dwelling on what we perceive as our frailties.
I have always been excited about growing older. As a child, if someone asked my age, I never just said six. I proudly answered, “Six and a half.” I couldn’t wait to reach the next stage of life.
Each decade has been a rite of passage. My twenties were about finishing college and beginning a career. My thirties were about buying a home and getting married. My forties were about building my career. My fifties have been different – and far more meaningful. They have been about coming home to myself; being less concerned with proving who I am and more committed to becoming who God created me to be. It has been a season of embracing my strengths and gifts, my imperfections and flaws, knowing that I am always growing and becoming. There is great freedom in that.
As I prepare to enter another decade, I feel that same excitement I had as a child.
I come from a family blessed with longevity. My grandfathers lived to 92 and 99. My mother lived to 83, and several of my aunts are now in their nineties. Yet I have also known the heartbreak of lives that ended too soon. My father died at 61. My brother died at 61, only months before turning 62. An aunt and several cousins left this world in their forties.
Those losses have taught me something profound: growing older is never guaranteed. It is a privilege denied to many. That is why I treasure each passing year with greater gratitude and wonder.
One of the greatest gifts of aging is growing older alongside those we love, celebrating milestones, creating memories, and simply being present. I often say I have “communities of communities,” and am deeply grateful for every one of them.
With age, our experience with loss also grows. Yet wisdom brings a different perspective. We see more clearly the lasting impact of those we have loved. They never fully leave us. They continue to occupy spaces within our hearts, shaping who we are. Death does not erase the connections we have made. Love endures.
As I have grown older, my faith has deepened. I spend more time with God – in conversation, prayer, stillness, and wonder. God’s beauty is everywhere, if we are willing to notice it. A sunset still takes my breath away. The rhythm of the ocean waves reaching the shore and retreating back to sea is mesmerizing. No matter how many years I am given, the wonder of God’s creation never grows old.
Life is precious and unpredictable, joyful and heartbreaking, ordinary and extraordinary – all at once. We can grieve and still laugh. We can carry hope even in uncertain times.
Life is measured not simply by the years we live, but by how deeply we love, how generously we touch the lives of others, and how faithfully we share God’s goodness with the world.
Every birthday is a gift. Every season is an invitation to grow in wisdom, faith, love, and wonder. Growing older is a privilege. I intend to slow down, savor each moment, and embrace every season of this extraordinary gift called life.
Life itself is God’s masterpiece.