Michele Howe - Joyous Faith: The Key to Aging with Resilience

Introduction

But he said to me, My grace is sufficient for you, for my power is made perfect in weakness. Therefore, I will boast all the more gladly about my weaknesses, so that Christs power may rest on me. That is why, for Christs sake, I delight in weaknesses, in insults, in hardships, in persecutions, in difficulties. For when I am weak, then I am strong.

2 Corinthians 12:910

W hen I sat down at my computer some eighteen months ago and began searching for just the right words to describe how hard aging can be once you reach fifty years and beyond, I came up with a myriad of descriptions and real-life examples to make my pitch to the Hendrickson publishing team. The more difficult challenge was narrowing down the character qualities for learning how to age welland remain joyful, faithful, strong, and resilient. Arent these the words we want to describe ourselves as we live out the entirety of our lives in a way that brings God glory?

I realized that living in the state of Michigan for my entire life (save the four years when we resided just over the state line in Ohio) qualified me as a hardy soul. Michiganders are well acquainted with the four seasons and their wildly fluctuating temperatures, colorfully diverse foliage, and hundreds of lakes in every shape and size (we are the Great Lake State after all). But the winters here are, in a word, brutal. In the winter months, urgent weather advisories ding our cell phones seemingly several times a day. Change by the minute is almost a given. You never know what type of weather-related challenge you are going to wake up to or woken in the middle of the night. Wind. Snow. Ice. Freezing rain. Flooding. Repeat. Repeat. Repeat. We Michiganders are hardy souls by nature because we have to be.

The fact is, many of character qualities that I deem essential to living in the Midwest are the very same we need to hone as we grow older. Let me elaborate. Aging is just like a Michigan winter. You enjoy a smattering of mild days with a rare glimmer of sunshine and you think to yourself, This isnt so bad. I can handle this. Then an ice storm hits. The power lines go down, and suddenly its dark and cold and more than a little bit scary. You really dont know how long youll have to endure living without power. Sure, we have generators, but they dont supply enough energy for the range of normal activities of everyday life, so we necessarily have to focus on the essentials.

After several days of hunkering down (and hoping and praying), the ice starts to melt as the temperatures rise degree by degree and the sun actually shines so you feel its warmth on your face for a few brief minutes. You feel a sudden boost of energetic confidence, enough to actually venture out again into the elements and all feels right in the world. But this euphoric feeling doesnt last long. Right after the sun disappears at five oclock, you receive a frantic call from a friend whose tire hit an only-in-Michigan-sized pothole and her car veered off into a ditch, leaving her stranded. Can you come and help?

Your friends unexpected emergency jolts you back to the harsh reality of these treacherous Michigan winters. A week or so passes uneventfully until the next snow storm hits and the weather conditions are so extreme that everything closes down. Businesses. Restaurants. Schools. Churches. Emergency vehicles only are allowed on the roaduntil further notice. Cancellations of this magnitude can make you feel so out of control and frustrated that you sense a silent scream emerging from deep within. You feel both vulnerable and powerless.

The next morning you rise and open the curtains to look outside, while mentally preparing to spend a good part of your morning shoveling and snow-blowing your walkways and driveway. But you sigh with relief to discover that the weather forecast was wrong and this northeaster mercifully passed you by this time around. You thank the good Lord for giving you a whole day to get out of the house and complete all the errands youve had to postpone because of inclement weatherbefore the next storm hits. Because you know it will.