In All My Experience...

One of my students at Leland began a question the other night with these words; "In all of your experience..." Something about those words made me suddenly feel a bit older. Perhaps the recognition I received at IHOP recently when told that I now qualify for the senior menu made me a bit more sensitive to the student's words. Or maybe it's the passage of time now marked by our "empty nest" that has made me more aware of my "maturity." It could be the occasional inquiry that comes from time to time these days about where and when we might retire.

I suppose I would have to admit that there are days when I feel a bit older than others; days when I recognize the signs of aging in my face or in the sounds of my occasionally creaking, stiff joints. I've had gray hair for years...of course I'm glad to have hair of any color. Perhaps the student's words caught me at just the right moment, you know, that intersection between reality and insecurity where something said at any other time wouldn't have hit me that way...but in that moment, it gave me reason to pause.

Some of you may be chuckling right now, thinking I'm too young for such thoughts, and I guess you are right. I'm in reasonably good health and have an otherwise positive outlook about life and living. I have always subscribed to the familiar adage, "You're as young as you feel," because I've always felt young, certainly younger than my years. But time now seems to slip by more quickly. Yes. I know there are still the same twenty-four hours in the day now that there were thirty years ago...perhaps I simply mark them in a different manner.

Irish playwright, Oscar Wilde, once said, "The old believe everything; the middle-aged suspect everything: the young know everything." Perhaps my middle-aged suspicions are simply running amok. The words of another middle-age man are appropriate for my season of suspicions. "I have learned the secret of being content in any and every situation... I can do all this through Christ who gives me strength." Paul's admonition to the church at Philippi is good medicine for my and your suspicions...no matter our age or circumstance.

In all my experience...I realize how blessed I have been in so many ways. Thanks be to God!

Jim Abernathy