So This is Sixty

As I write this, I am stepping into my seventh decade.  I am today, sixty years old.  Or, as I like to think, I am celebrating the twenty-first anniversary of my thirty-ninth birthday.  It is not at all what I thought when I was a boy.  My early memories of grandpa were when he was this age and he seemed tto be ancient.  I don't feel ancient at all.  I don't feel youthful but I don't feel elderly in the least.

Oh, of course, I can see what the mirror tells me.  I'm grey-haired and and weather worn.  Some might call that getting a bit wrinkled but I prefer to think of myself as achieving a ruggedly handsome maturity of facial distinction.  Well, you say tomato, I say vine-ripened fruit.

The thing about aging is that it is as much mental as it is physical.  My grandpa, at this age, resigned himself to sitting on the couch while we grandkids played on the floor.  When "Pops" (me) goes to Texas to see the grandkids, I get in the floor with them, I swing them about, I play with them.  If I am on the couch, they are on top of me.

 I have to grow older at the pace time travels but I chose how face I want to grow up.  I simply haven't chosen to let go of my playful spirit.  It requires more rest than before and can't hang as long as before but I am not letting it slip into the past as long as I have the will to hang on to it.

I'm not trying to hang on to my youth.  I have fond memories of my younger years but I also know what a struggle they were.  The battles I fought then allow me to enjoy the season of life the Lord has brought me to.  I don't look upon maturing in age as a curse, I see it as a reward, which is exactly what it is: "Gray hair is a crown of splendor; it is attained in the way of righteousness" (Pr 16:31).

I wouldn't dream of coloring over my gray hair with dye because it is a crown of achievement.  I welcome each gray hair as a gift from the Lord.  And besides, hair that doesn't turn gray, turns loose.  I'm just saying.  Gray hair is as much a defining mark of we seniors as muscle definition is the defining mark of the young: "The glory of young men is their strength, gray hair the splendor of the old" (Pr 20:29).

So, by God's grace, I've begun the winter season of my life.  However, I do not intend to bundle up by the fire and watch life go by through the window.  I will be out there throwing snowballs with the grandkids.  And since I am over the hill anyway, I think I'll try snowboarding to the end instead of riding in a horse-drawn sleigh.  Jus' Say'n.