Changing Seasons

To everything there is a season, and a time to every purpose under heaven. Ecc. 3:1

It was deceptively slow, so slow I didn’t even realize what had happened. My youth simply slipped away and was replace by mature adulthood. I noticed creaky joints when I got out of bed on chilly mornings, but I couldn’t be getting old. Baby boomers don’t age. I mean, the TV says that 65 is the new 50 and 45 is the new . . . you get the idea.

Then I got the awful news. My Aunt Carol had died.

Uncle Clyde and Aunt Carol raised my cousins in Southern CA. When my dad was transferred to the military base at Camp Pendleton CA, I became acquainted with this branch of my family tree.

For the next year my brothers, cousins, and I trekked through the California hills, along beaches, and found adventures around every corner. I felt like one of those early California explorers, discovering new treasures each day.

Now my cousins are all adults with grown children of their own. Time slipped away. It seemed that all our childhood dreams had gotten lost between changing dirty diapers, balancing checkbooks, and driving to soccer practices.

After the funeral I shared some childhood memories with cousins Sherri and Sandy. I reminisced about the time that Cathy and I climbed steep cliffs overlooking the crashing waves along the beach near San Clemente. Needless to say, our parents weren’t amused by our antics.

That’s when it hit me hard. Both dad and Uncle Clyde died years ago. Three of the four adults in that story were gone. Many of my other mentors are deceased. There are less and less people around who remember me as a child.

The thought sent me reeling. Up until this point I looked at aging as another one of life’s adventures, like marriage, and parenthood. Suddenly I had the overwhelming need to grieve the loss of the person I had been.

This melancholy lingered, even after I returned to my classroom responsibilities. Though I love my job, schoolteacher was a far cry from the news journalist or marine biologists I once planned to be. My life had turned out to be—quite ordinary.

For days I listened to a satellite oldies station and tried to resolve the turmoil inside my brain. Oldies! Each song seemed to bring back some youthful memory and I wept at the remembrance of a time when everything was new and anything was possible.

When the tears stopped and my mind cleared, I went to my computer and talked to people about this melancholy. Others seemed to have dealt with similar “midlife crises.” Most people gave the advice I expected; pray, search scriptures, do charitable works. I still felt empty.

In time, I began to realize that I do have some choices. I can assess my life goals and see if they are realistic and attainable.

Many people testified that, for them, this assessment exercise was a very helpful. Some had outgrown their former goals. When they developed more mature values, new--more satisfying goals emerged. For example, I’m not going to become a marine biologist and I can’t travel on the Calypso with the late Jacque Cousteau.

--But that doesn’t mean I have to give up all my dreams.

Grandma Moses didn’t start painting until she was in her 70s. She had to give up embroidery because arthritis made the needlework too painful. When she mixed her first paints Grandma Moses didn’t realize she was about to become famous the world over.

The Bible is filled with stories about God choosing to fulfill His purpose late in a person’s life, from Caleb to Sarah. Age doesn’t seem to be as much of a problem to God as it is to us.

I found a multitude of stories, both historic and contemporary, of people whose lives seemed to begin after they were much older than I. Perhaps once we are freed from changing diapers or driving to soccer practice, we have more time to pursue the things we were once passionate about. Some of our most fulfilling endeavors can be pursued when our obligations to others have been completed.

In time my anxiety subsided a bit. What I need to figure out now is—what do I do about those creaky joints on chilly mornings.