Fed taken to woodshed
March 14, 2012Nicholls can
March 14, 2012My family got together this past weekend to celebrate my mother’s 95th birthday.
Charlotte Todd raised 10 children then decided to go back to college at the age of 67 to continue her education. She got her teacher’s certificate and, after graduation, worked with special education students.
When my father died in 1978, Charlotte had a choice. She could stay home and feel sorry for herself, or she could continue to live life to the fullest. She decided to be active, to be involved in new things, new adventures, new possibilities.
My family is indeed blessed. Charlotte has been living by herself for the past 34 years and will be moving into an assisted-living facility at the end of this month. She still has her “good mind.” However, her aortic heart valve is wearing out and is not pumping properly so she gets dizzy when she exerts herself too much. (She is considering a value replacement.)
Radio Hall of Fame newscaster Lowell Thomas once said, “The secret of my vigor and activity is that I have managed to have a lot of fun.” Old age should be one of the most satisfying periods of our lives.
Sister Joan Chittister in her book “The Gifts of Years” says, “The danger of old age is that we start acting old. And it is fun that keeps us laughing, and laughing that keeps us happy in the here and now. And it is in the here and now that we will spend the final stage of life.”
Sister Joan goes on to say, “When we start acting old, however old we are, we’re finished. If we’re really old when we start acting old, it’s even worse. Then, acting our age is a terminal illness.”
I had a good friend whose mother lived to be about 100. This lady loved to dance. When the music started, she was on the dance floor dancing to her heart’s content.
My mother is the same way. This is the first year she was not able to attend any of the Mardi Gras parades. However, she still plays Bridge, loves to go out and eat and be with people, recently attended a first birthday party for her great-granddaughter and keeps up with what is going on in the world. As Sister Joan says, “If life is really for the living, then the trick of living well is to learn to live it fully, to soak in it, to revel in it.”
She goes on to say, “What we too often fail to realize is that living fully depends a great deal more on our frame of mind, on our fundamental spirituality, than it does on our physical condition. If we see God as good, we see life as good. If we see God as a kind of sly and insidious judge, tempting us with good things to see if we can be seduced into some sort of moral depravity by them, then life is a trap to be feared.”
She continues, “Living well has something to do with the spirituality of wholeheartedness, of seeing life more as a grace than as a penance, as time to be lived with eager expectation of its goodness, not in dread of its challenges. We are not given life in order to suffer. We are given life to learn to love the Creator through the joys and beauty of creation. We are given life to deal gracefully with the natural suffering of being mortal creatures. When we fail to meet life head on, we fail to live it fully.”
Life is not simply what happens to us. Life is also what we ourselves make happen. God has given us the gift of life. Don’t return it unwrapped.
