The party was winding down. The games had been played, the food had been eaten, and the honey pot favors were lined up, waiting to be distributed. Katyana had just opened her present from her friend Millie --a dress-up outfit with a veil she promptly put on backward. She gave Millie a big hug. I was drained, but the party had been worth the effort.
Despite the fact that I'm growing older (no one ever grows younger), I hate those emails that start, "You know you're getting old when. . ." or that attempt to stimulate nostalgia for the music or movies or TV shows of an earlier decade.
For some reason, I persist in thinking that the best is yet to come, and the Apostle Paul seems to agree. "Though outwardly we are wasting away," he says, "yet inwardly we are being renewed day by day" (2 Corinthians 4:16).
It happened the day Katyana was born, and it happens repeatedly as she learns new skills and concepts and discovers new delights. How renewing to see the world through her fresh eyes.
It happens in the early morning when the house is cool and still, and I'm reading God's Word and talking with him. It happens when we're singing in church or sharing the Lord's Supper, and I feel particularly in tune with my brothers and sisters and with God.
It happens when Frank or one of the kids does or says something that touches me. It happens when I'm reading or writing and the words fall together in a particularly satisfying pattern, or when the colors of a sunset or the flash of a hummingbird brings tears to my eyes (there's something about growing older that brings the tears closer to the surface).
Despite the aches and pains, the losses in strength or memory that come from growing old, I'm reminded each day of the inward renewal, the spiritual renewal, that comes from my life with God and with the people he's given me to love.
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