daily java

Daily Java:

King David was now very old, and no matter how many blankets covered him, he could not keep warm. (1 Kings 1:1)

I just watched Rocky Balboa again. It was a good movie, but it made me sad. There are things in life as you get older that you have to say are over. This was the last Rocky film. He is around my age so there is no way he can credibly do this again. So he has to quit.

But still, Rocky has been around all my adult life since the first one in the 1970's. And now it is through. So many actors have gotten old (which is of course the natural order of things). The Star Trek people are either dead or so old they look weird, the idea of Harrison Ford doing another action flick is ludicrous, all of them are old now so it has to stop.

I see them getting older and it reminds me that when people look at me, they do not see the healthy, handsome, strong, virile man they used to. Well, maybe they were on something when they did, but still, I am not what I used to be.

In fact, no one is. Anybody who thinks he is the same as he used to be is foolish and full of beans. That is why it is funny to see people like rock stars and movie stars trying to act and dress as they did twenty or thirty years ago. They look foolish. Madonna and Cher are perfect examples.

We have to admit the fact that we are getting older. It is hard and not very much fun, but it is true. We have to acknowledge that we have been here for a while.

You figure. I remember when the Beatles came out. I remember, in fact, when Elvis came out. I even remember when this country was a good one with men acting like men and women acting like women and children – you know. I remember paying (and this is true) 9 cents for a gallon of gas. Houston, TX, had some phenomenal gas wars. I remember touch tone phones coming in. I remember giant cars and 15 cent large fountain Dr Peppers.

In fact, I remember so much that sometimes I get tired of remembering it all. And I start wondering if I need a bed warmer like King David had in 1 Kings 1. Of course, Ella gets mad when I bring it up, so probably not.

But the body begins to betray you. Thursday night, I began my nightly ritual of 100 pushups (I do them every 40 years like clockwork) and threw my shoulder out. And there are other things.

But I have to acknowledge that age is real and that I, like every other human being who lives very long, has to go through it. I suppose that the age factor is the only thing our Lord never had to go through. He died early.

But it is something that is common to all older people. Sooner or later, they get older and tired and sooner or later they get cold, no matter how many blankets get piled on them.

But, even though we get tired, the grace of God never does. The mercy of God never does. The love of God never does. As Lamentations 3:22-23 says The faithful love of the Lord never ends! His mercies never cease. Great is his faithfulness; his mercies begin afresh each morning.

His blanket never quits working and his love never ends. He is God.

daily java

Daily Java:

As the Scriptures say,
  “People are like grass;
  their beauty is like a flower in the field.
The grass withers and the flower fades.
But the word of the Lord remains forever.” (1 Peter 1:23-25)

Getting older is strange to one who is doing it for the first time. I suppose that is everyone. It isn’t as though you can go to a seminar on it and learn how to get older, or have some trial runs.

You just do it. And then you are older.

I mentioned last week that I had my hand operated on. This week, the doctor took out the stitches and I am going through the process of rebuilding the strength in that hand.

Just a warning: if you shake my right hand and squeeze real hard like Chuck does, I will probably scream like a little girl. It is rather tender. And I tend to favor it. I know that if I turn it hard, the incision will not pop open and all my hand guts go falling out on the table. I know that – most of the time. But, still.

I was always proud of the strength in my hands when I was younger. That was before the onset of carpal tunnel syndrome and all. There was a time when I could tear a telephone book in half. In college, I would buy a used paperback of a novel I had to review and didn’t like and would return the two halves along with my report. Of course, now, I can tear a sheet of paper in half as long as it isn’t too thick.

Ella had to help me open my thermos the other day. It had gotten a vacuum seal and I became frantic. There was coffee in there!! I needed to get to it. So I got out the vise-grips and she held the bottom while I turned and finally it came open.

A little embarrassing. But, I guess, part of life.

I remember seeing a picture of the old Johnny Weismuller. He looked so wasted. I mean, he was about 80 or so, but still it was surprising. There was a strong looking man when he was younger. But he got old.

It comes to everyone. I have read that Arnold Schwartzenegger had to quit his muscle roles after his heart surgery because he was no longer able to bulk up like he did before. And he is only a couple of years older than me.

Sooner or later these guys – Arnold, Sylvester Stallone, others – will have to lay down the barbells. They just will be too old.

Everybody gets old unless they die first. That is why James Dean and Marilyn Monroe are so young to us. Jimi Hendrix, Janis Joplin, others who died too early remain young in our minds.

But everybody who lives gets old. And there is nothing you can do about it. Of course, you can live in the past, remembering the glory days when you could bench press a Buick. But it does no good. All you can do is be the best you can be now. Older. With weaker hands. Gray hair. An old geezer drooling into his coffee.

It comes to everyone. But God remains forever.

nothing but the word of our God lasts

A voice said, “Shout!”
      I asked, “What should I shout?”
“Shout that people are like the grass.
      Their beauty fades as quickly
           as the flowers in a field.
      The grass withers and the flowers fade
          beneath the breath of the Lord.
      And so it is with people.
 The grass withers and the flowers fade,
         but the word of our God stands forever.” (Isaiah 40:6-8)

Forty years ago, I had been out of the army for about a month. Civilian life was still new and exciting to me.

Since I was a draftee, I still had a couple of years of reserve left. I didn’t want to do it, but then again, there was nothing I could do about it.

I showed up for reserve the first month with my new muttonchop sideburns. No one cared that I was there, no one noticed me. I left and went home and never went again.

And I grew my sideburns and mustache long along with my hair.

Forty years ago. That is four decades. And in many ways it seems like yesterday.

We lived in an apartment on Lawndale St in Houston, TX. I worked for Bell Telephone and Ella had a job with Transcontinental Gas Pipeline Corp. We were having a good time.

The old song says, “Those were the days, my friend, we thought they’d never end, we’d sing and dance forever and a day.” It seemed like it would go on forever.

Still newly married (January of that year), still reveling in the new familiarity that was the United States after a year and a half in Germany for me, six months for Ella. Stores were open late (they closed at five in Germany), hamburgers were huge, all the stuff. It was just plain fun.

Forty years ago.

So what do I tell my kids? What do I tell kids in general?

I tell them people are like grass. I tell them the grass withers and the flowers fade, but the word of our God stands forever. That’s what I tell them. Things that seemed so permanent are gone. And America has changed so massively, and not for the better.

Nothing but the word of our God lasts. Nothing but his love and grace are eternal.

Of course, when you are young, and the blood runs hot in your veins, you don’t think of the temporality of life. You are invulnerable. You cannot die. You are strong and healthy and full of life.

September of 1971. My hair was getting longer, I had traded fatigues for bellbottoms, I was making friends and driving fast and just in general having a good time. “In the Year 2525” and “Admiral Halsey” were on the radio, Nixon was president, gas in Houston was less than twenty cents a gallon and we were feeling fine.

But – beauty fades as quickly as the flowers in a field. The grass withers and the flowers fade beneath the breath of the Lord.

Stuff stops being so easy and you get older. You get tired, arthritis replaces good muscles, you get cataracts, yada yada.

Unfortunately, like it was with Isaiah, people do not want to hear that things will change. And sometimes I cannot tell them.

But it surely is true.

i have begun dropping things

In the past couple of years, for some reason, I have begun dropping things. Rare is the time in the kitchen when I do not drop two or three things while fixing dinner or just being in the kitchen.

I attributed it to my kitchen in Lincoln. I didn’t like the setup and thought it inefficient. Since it was a rent house, there was little I could do about it. So I would pick things up several times.

But I find I am doing it here too. My daughter’s kitchen is extremely inefficient as far as kitchens go, but still. I keep dropping things. It has to be me.

I will drop food, utensils, ice, glasses – enough of a range that it is not just the kitchen at fault. It is me.

I have even dropped plates of food. I dropped a fruit dessert on my guitar tuner which caused it to malfunction. I dropped coffee on my key board. I dropped a spoon while ago while making Ella something to drink.

They are all minor things (except for the fruit dessert) but all together they are annoying. And I do not know why I drop the things.

I have never been a paragon of grace and beauty of movement. I was always strong, but never graceful. I, quite frankly, move like a lummox and always have. That is one reason I never danced. I look like a crippled rhino when I do.

But for some reason, I am beginning to drop things. Some of it is my hands. I am developing carpal tunnel syndrome pretty badly and need some work done. My hands, as a result, are constantly asleep.

This makes it hard to type, and to play my guitar. After a while it is hard to tell where my pick is in my hand. Sometimes if not careful I will drop the pick and will cut my finger on the guitar strings.

I suppose part of it is getting older. Looking forward to a life of falling down and dropping stuff and drooling into my beard and maybe, if I am lucky, incontinence.

Oh, joy.

it is ten o’clock at night and i have just fallen down

It is ten o’clock at night and I have just fallen down.

It was a rather shocking fall that scared the daylights (except that it was night time) out of my daughter.

Her husband has an antique dog (16 years old) that is somewhat incontinent so she has begun putting her in the kitchen at night. Tonight she had the idea of putting the table leaf (a plain piece of plywood I fixed to extend her dining table) over the door.

The dog is old and infirm enough that she would not be able to jump over it, even though it is only 12 inches high.

For that matter the dog is less than 12 inches high so it works well.

The problem is, although I watched her put it there and we talked about it, it is the same color as the floor.

I walked into the kitchen with a couple of foam plates and tripped over it. I landed smack on my bad knee (the right one which is swollen most of the time anyway) and scraped the fire out of my left shin. Not only that but I hit the floor whack on my chest (alright, my stomach hit first. Are you happy?) and on my right palm, the same way I used to land the few times I fell off the motorcycle.

It was so quick. One moment I was standing and walking, a relatively normal and handsome, talented, erudite person, the next instant I was on my chest and in pain. It happened so fast I didn’t even know it had until after it did.

My daughter was shocked. She kept apologizing. She said, You saw me put it there, Dad. I am so sorry.

I levered myself up off the floor and told her it was not her fault, I had helped her put the stupid thing there myself.

But it was so fast. And since I am well over six feet tall and weigh 280 pounds, I fall far and land hard. It is one reason I never got into skating. Little people have no problem falling. They just kind of go down. I fall like a pine tree. Boom!

It made me think about the old people I have known who were living perfectly good and normal lives and then fell. In the two or three seconds it took them to fall, their lives were through. They broke a hip or shoulder or something and, due to their advanced age, never recovered.

It was not long before they were in nursing homes, and died soon after that.

It is becoming noticeable to me that I am getting older. That is the second time in less than a month that I have fallen. And there were two other times when I thought I was going to fall but didn’t.

That does not please me, since I do not like falling. It hurts. I have been fortunate in my life in that my bones and teeth are made of iron. I have never broken anything even though I have had some major whacks. My teeth have chipped a couple of places from using them as pliers as a young man but in general I do not even have any cavities.

But I suppose that could stop. Ella falls a lot and I worry for her. She has developed a grace in falling that comes from a lot of practice. When she feels herself falling, she goes limp and lands in a loose flop. Then if necessary, she will pull her skirt down.

I do not think I have ever seen anyone fall more gracefully than she does.

But she has had to. I have not. I have bulled my way through life on sheer strength and personal presence. Nobody much argues with a guy my size. I just move forward and life moves out of the way.

But a guy my size hits the floor hard. It is absolutely true the old saying: the bigger they are, the harder they fall.

And I hate it.

Well, a few extra Hydrocodones tonight. I am going to wake up so sore tomorrow. What a clumsy guy I am becoming.

Someone once said (actually my mother) that getting old is not for sissies. And they were right.

i am looking at a pair of red wool sox that i bought in 1970

Can he walk on hot coals and not blister his feet? (Proverbs 6:28)

I am looking at a pair of red wool sox that I bought in 1970. And here they are still in my possession. No holes, no visible wear, still bright red.

I remember when I bought them. It was in Germany in the PX and my feet were cold. They were ski sox and were rather thick wool and came in two colors: red and blue. I bought one of each for about a dollar each. I wore them with my combat boots in the snow.

I have had those sox since before I got married, before I had any career plans (other than leaving the army as fast as I could), before I answered the call to preach, before all my whole life.

I bought them before I was 21. And now here I am at almost 62.

The blue ones are gone somewhere, no telling where. The red ones look a little old, but for 41 year old sox, they look great.

I bought them when Nixon was president, when the Vietnam war was raging, when gas was less than a quarter, when you could walk right onto an airplane, when people hitchhiked without fear, when long hair on guys was considered bad, when bell bottoms were coming in, when cars were huge, when a computer took up an entire floor in a skyscraper, when the Beatles were still together (barely), when the world was young and so was I.

It was before air conditioning for the most part, before so many things, before fear.

When I bought those sox, my whole life was before me in all its shining splendor. Now it lies for the most part behind me. There are very few things I have that are that old or older, but none are in as good a shape as these sox. Except for the heat, I could put them on tomorrow and wear them. The elastic in the top is long gone, but the basic structure of the sox is still good.

Now sometimes my wife wears them in the evening. Since the advent of fleece sox, she hasn’t. but she used to a lot.

I have had a dozen or more guitars, a couple of dozen cars, one wife, two children, a dozen or more cats and dogs, a number of coffeemakers, quite a few heartbreaks in ministry, three or four wedding rings, but this one pair of sox still remains.

I may be making more of this than I should, but there seems to something apocalyptic about a 41 year old pair of sox. I feel they need to be noticed, celebrated, something. Maybe a frame with a little LED spotlight.

I know they are good for an article in my blog, but other than that, they will probably go back into the drawer and sit, waiting for their moment in the cold to give warmth. Maybe I can will them to one of my kids and he or she can start a heritage. Heritage sox.

Yes, kids, your great, great grandpa bought these in Europe in the old days. I think it was during World War 2 or something, and he brought them over the Oregon Trail or something. They were special sox and kept him from freezing to death with the Donner Party or something like that.

Great sox. Stupid kids though with no knowledge of history.

BTW, the verse above has nothing to do with sox, but I just like to match a verse. It makes me feel all spiritual.

i am beginning to feel my age

Once I was young, and now I am old. (Psalm 37:25 NLT)

I am beginning to feel my age.

It is an almost indefinable feeling, hard to explain. But it is like art: you may not be able to understand it, but you know what you like. Age is that way, only without the like part, or the art part, for that matter: you cannot explain it, but you know it is there.

Part of it is the mental distance you feel from young people. As a 61 year old man, I feel that distance. They do too, you can see it. The mental framework is different when you are young than it is when you are older. You have seen more things and are sure of less things. Things of utmost importance change as you get older, values shift, priorities rearrange.

Experience is much greater and dreams are less. There are things you are just too old to do or to want to do. and some things – such as family and faith – are far more important.

More and more, I feel that distance in years.

I remember Elvis Presley coming out, his first records. I don’t recall the exact record, but I do recall that my parents didn’t like him so I didn’t, being a good boy. But I was about 7 or 8 years old at that time. Heartbreak Hotel and Love Me Tender were about that time. He has been dead now for 34 years.

I remember the Beatles coming out. “She Loves You” and “I Want to Hold Your Hand” were the songs I first heard. In fact, I heard them in gym class. The boys were on one side of  the gym and the girls on the other (no co-ed PE then – another distance), and someone, for some reason, had a record player (another distance) playing a 45 rpm record (another distance) of one of these.

I asked who it was singing, and someone told me it was that new group, The Beatles. I had heard negative things about them at church and home so I wasn’t sure. But I quickly made up my own mind. I liked them. Two of them have been dead for quite a while now.

When I got out of school, I got a job with the telephone company (another distance since there was only one) and got a car with an AM radio with push buttons (another distance). My girlfriend (now my wife) changed all of the buttons to her stations which played top 40. I had listened to a blend of music, but no more. I quickly got hooked on the new stuff (Rolling Stones, Ohio Express, Monkees - another distance),

When I went into the army, I got into acid rock (Hendrix and others). And on it went.

My memories are going further and further back. It seems like just a few years ago I was in high school, but I graduated in 1968. It seems just a while ago that I was in the army, but I got out in 1971. It seems that we have not been married for all that long, but it has been forty years.

One of the best times of our lives was in Spokane, but it has been thirty years since we left. It seems like a short time ago that I graduated from college or seminary, but my last graduation date was 1985. It seems like just a while ago that I left the Church of Christ, but it was in 1994.

Life is on fast forward and I do not want it to be.

The past few years have been hard ones and I guess the scrabbling for existence had made the time go faster.

I have already been in Lincoln for over a year.

And I am about to turn 62, retirement age if I wanted it to be.

So many people I remember as teenagers are retired now. Some are dead, some are having real troubles in life, some are doing well. Some have found the Lord. Some haven’t. But all those who are still alive are significantly older.

The distance from then to now is far greater than I ever thought it would be. I never had a mental concept of being older. Oddly enough, I still think of myself, at times, as being younger. Then I will catch sight of myself in the mirror or a window and it will surprise me. I am white headed and bearded. I am wrinkled, although not as much as I thought I would be.

I see my wife, and although she still looks good for her age, it is for her age that comes to mind. She is older than I think she ought to be.

Memories come flashing back. A song on the oldies station will flash me to 1972 on a warm Houston night in our 1968 Ford Galaxie 500. Another will put me in the snack bar in Germany at the army base. Another I will be in seminary. Another and another.

Someone once wrote that you become old when you replace your dreams with regrets.

It seems to me that it would be impossible to be otherwise. At this age I do not have a lot of dreams. Too many of them have been smashed or fulfilled. I only have a few years left. With good health, maybe 20. Half the distance to getting out of the army. Ten less than in Spokane. Five less than graduation from my second degree. Only three more than since I left the Church of Christ.

I was listening to a song on the radio in a store not long ago and asked the guy behind the counter, have you ever thought about the fact that three of that foursome are dead now? He hadn’t thought about it, I guess. So many songs I hear are by people who have been dead for a long time, decades sometimes.

Time has gone by so fast. And as I said, I am beginning to feel my age.

last sunday I talked to a young woman

Last Sunday I talked to a young woman. This is not all that unusual for a pastor, but what was unusual was that this woman was in her 80’s. She is diminishing in mental capacity, stooped over, her hands are shaking.

I leaned over, like I do sometimes. Since I am 6’3”, and she was about 4’something, I had to bend down a ways. She couldn’t really look up.

I said, Hi, pretty girl. She looked behind her and said, I don’t think you are talking to me and she smiled. When she did, she was young.

We bantered a bit. As we did, it dawned on me how the young woman looked and sounded. Even though she was old, she was suddenly young and talking to a man.

When I was young, probably in my mid 20’s, a friend and I went to visit an old man and his wife. She was in the far stages of what we called senility at the time. She knew nothing of anything. He had her sitting beside him in her chair, but there was no communication.

As he and we were talking, he said, I know my wife is older, but when I look at her, I still see the young woman I married.

My first thought was, you are crazy old man. That woman looks like an old, brain dead woman. Remember I was young.

As I get older, I realize he was right. My wife looks the same to me most of the time. There are times like today, when she worked too hard and was having problems. At those times she looks tired and drawn.

But she still looks like Ella, my wife. And I love her. To young people, she is an older woman. But to me, she is my love and eternally young.

The woman I talked to last Sunday, for a few moments, was young again, almost coquettish. I enjoyed making her acquaintance, if not for just a brief time.

I look forward to it again.

daily java

Daily Java:

Gray hair is a crown of splendor; it is attained by a righteous life. (Proverbs 16:30-32)

We have been in Nebraska for almost a year but have never gotten around to getting our drivers’ licenses. No real reason, just that we never got around to it.

Today, we fortified ourselves and went. I combed my hair, Ella spent one entire hour putting on make-up and trying to figure out what to wear. It is just a driver’s license. No, I will have to look at it for a long time.

I guess so. In my case, big fat deal. I look like me and don’t take that good a picture anyway. She does, so she works at it.

I could spend a couple of hours at the make-up booth at Clinique in the mall and a long time at Mastercuts and still look like I do. Besides, people would wonder why I was wearing make-up. I am having my picture made, I would say. Oh, for a professional portrait? No. The DMV. I have to look at it for a long time, you know. They would stop, look at me and say lovingly, get away, please.

So we went in. There were sheets to fill out beforehand, so all of your information could be conveniently re-asked. Age – check. Weight – uh, waffle, waffle. Eyes – hazel. Color hair – ?. I asked my wife, what color is my hair. She said gray.

Gray. I used to have this great dark brown, almost auburn in highlights, afro. When it was longer, it was thick and curly. And my beard was black/brown shot with red. It looked great. For a while, people would use Grizzly Adams in describing me.

But now gray.

Gray.

Omar Khayyám, in a book he called the Rubáiyát of Omar Khayyám (rubaiyat was a Persian word for quatrains) (sonnets of four lines each) (like you care) wrote:

The Moving Finger writes; and, having writ,
Moves on: nor all thy Piety nor Wit
Shall lure it back to cancel half a Line,
Nor all thy Tears wash out a Word of it.

He also wrote:

Come, fill the Cup, and in the fire of Spring
Your Winter-garment of Repentance fling:
The Bird of Time has but a little way
To flutter--and the Bird is on the Wing.

The apostle Paul said some of the same things in Romans 13:11-12:

And do this, understanding the present time. The hour has come for you to wake up from your slumber, because our salvation is nearer now than when we first believed. The night is nearly over; the day is almost here. So let us put aside the deeds of darkness and put on the armor of light.

Jesus said in John 9:4:

As long as it is day, we must do the work of him who sent me. Night is coming, when no one can work.

In other words, sooner or later you go to the DMV and your hair gets listed as gray.

You just hope it is a crown of splendor. There is nothing worse than old people on TV doing stupid things.

I guess that it will be gray until it is either gone or I am dead.

And BTW,, my son informed us at dinner the other night that we were older people. Thank you, Sam. (Mental note to my lawyer – kick his inheritance down)

I need to work more on the righteous life.

i was young and now i am old.

I was young and now I am old. (Psalm 37:25)

For some reason, old ladies used to love me, even when I was in my 20’s and early 30’s. For some reason I reminded them of their fathers. I wore a long mustache, vested suits with a watch chain (stylish in the 70’s and 80’s) and wire rimmed glasses. That gave me a somewhat antique look. Coupled with the fact that I was so tall, I just looked like their fathers.

It amazed me at how many would say, you look just like my father. It was kind of amusing for a 26 year old man to hear that from a 78 year old lady. But I did. I had a definite Teddy Roosevelt look to me.

The one day, a girl told me I reminded her of her father. It was a shock.

Wait, I thought, how did I get from old ladies’ fathers to young women’s fathers. It was a transition that was not so welcome.

I always wanted a black leather jacket. When I was young, I would put one on in the store and someone would make vrooming noises like a motorcycle. Someone else would tell me that I looked mean in it. So I never got one.

Then one day I put one on and asked Ella how I looked and she said fine. All of a sudden there were no motorcycles in the background. I was just me. So I bought it and wore it.

Wait, I thought, how did I get from a motorcycle guy to just a guy in a coat. It also was a transition I did not entirely welcome.

Life changes and then you die. One day you are a vibrant young man who can bench press a Buick. You have stamina and wind and, well, I never was that handsome, but still. I looked a lot better than I do now. And like someone said, the older I get the better I was.

But to go from old ladies’ dads to young women’s dads is hard. I am waiting for some good-looking girl to tell me I remind her of her grandfather.

I will hit her with my walker.

i have been young and now i am old

I was young and now I am old. (Psalm 37:25)

I saw a guy tonight at the mall that looked so much like I looked when I was in 20’s. He was big and tall, he had curly hair in a kind of afro, with muttonchop sideburns and a mustache.

I got to thinking. I miss my hair. I had great muttonchop sideburns and a strong curly head of hair and a great mustache. And I was big and tall without being fat.

Now you are thinking, what a vain guy. Thank you for thinking that. It is so kind of you.

But it is more of a feeling of loss than anything else. There is no way you can stay young and vibrant. It is foolish to think so.  But you do miss those things that you had and were able to do.

I watch my wife getting older and realize that life is winding down for both of us. It is only 25 years to 85 for me. That is less time to that age than there was to the age of 35, a vibrant time of my life.

But there is something to getting older.

I have been young and now I am getting old. And I have seen a lot in that time, in some ways more than I wanted to.

There are things I have seen that I would just as soon not seen, and there are things I have seen that I will treasure the rest of my life. Those things, along with the accompanying experiences make me who I am.

Because of them I am me.

I am no longer the man I saw at the mall tonight. Nor really do I necessarily want to be.

But I did enjoy the hair and sideburns.

turning 60

It is strange turning 60. Of course, it has been five months since I did, but still. Someone once said that it was far easier turning 60 than staying 60. I was all ready to turn 60, but I never thought about the fact that I would have to stay 60 for a whole year. Then, again of course, I would turn 61 and would be officially a senior citizen.

It has been 34 years since I completed preachers’ school, 31 years since I moved to Spokane, 24 years since I graduated college, 14 years since I planted that church in Odessa, MO, six years since I decided to go into the Assembly of God, a year and a half since I left the AG. Ella and I have been married over 39 years. Our children are in their early 30’s and late 20’s.

I have waked (waken, woken?) up old, and I do not remember turning old.

There were things I wanted to do that I will never do. I suppose that is the complaint of every older man, but I am not every older man. I am me, and I feel what I feel more strongly than I feel what others feel.

I find myself older than every teacher I ever had with the possible exception of one in college. Every other one, elementary, Jr High, High School, college, Preachers’ School, all of the teachers I have ever had, I am older than they were.

Yet when I look at my wife, who is almost as old as I am, I do not see an older woman. I see Ella.

When I was a young man, I visited with an old man whose wife had alzheimer’s. she sat there beside him, a doddering old woman with no mind and wrinkled to pieces. He said that when he looks at her, she didn’t look any older than she did when they got married. I thought that his mind was gone. That woman was old.

We are not nearly that old, as old as they were, – I think – but it is the same with us. I do not see her as older, but I see her as her. She, to me, is timeless and ageless. Yes, her hair is graying – although it looks more sreaked than gray – and she has wrinkles in places she didn’t used to have wrinkles in, but she is still my love. And I guess I look at her through the lenses of love.

That sounded weird, but it is true.

And I look in the mirror and am truly surprised at myself. I look my age.

Turning 60 was a lot easier than staying 60. How in the world did such a cool young rebel like me ever turn into an old guy?

daily java

Daily Java: For I know the plans I have for you," declares the LORD, "plans to prosper you and not to harm you, plans to give you hope and a future. Then you will call upon me and come and pray to me, and I will listen to you. You will seek me and find me when you seek me with all your heart.- Jeremiah 29:11-13.

This is one of those passages that is both comforting and frustrating at the same time.

It is comforting because I know that God has something in mind for me. He has plans for me and those plans are to give me hope and a future. That is great. God loves me and wants the best for me.

On the other hand, it is frustrating because I want to know what they are. I am burning time now in my life. At the age of 60, I do not have that much time left. If God has plans, what are they? When will they manifest themselves in my life? When will I know what they are?

It seems that my whole life has been waiting for God to show his plans to me. I have beat my head against his wall again and again. I would do everything and then I would realize that it is his will that I am swerving, so I would wait for him. But in both cases, it would seem that he would ignore me.

Then every once in a while, something would come that would show me that he was watching me and knew me. Almost dribbles of knowledge.

But I do not want dribbles of knowledge. I want to see him working in my life.

Of course, someone will say (without a bit of knowledge), you just need to have faith and to wait on him. You can’t push the will of God. He will do things in his own time.

And that is absolutely true. And I have. People who say things like that are good at parroting cloying aphorisms without thinking about what they mean. They just sound good and when they say them, they feel “spiritual.” They are on the order of the idiot pastor who told a woman that her husband died of cancer because she didn’t have enough faith. It was just something to say that took them off the hook and gave them feelings of spirituality. It also makes them feel superior.

But enough of that screed. That isn’t why I am writing this blog. I guess.

I want God to manifest himself in my new work in Lincoln. And I need him to do it soon. In six months I will be 61.