Telling Your Story
I never gave any thought to growing older.
In our 20s, youth with all its hopes, dreams and eagerness shines brilliantly. In fact, the light is so bright that it blocks out the fact that I would someday be the one with gray hair, expanding waist and unexplained aches that take longer and longer to disappear, if they do at all.
I didn't expect that.
Behind every pair of bifocal-ed eyes, is a pair of young eyes still seeing themselves through the eyes of youth. Inside every gray-hair capped head works the brain of a 20-something who thinks their body can still do everything they used to do, and at the same speed.
I didn't expect that either.
In our 30s and 40s, we are raising families, making homes and building a farm or career. We are putting to use the library of knowledge and skill collected during the first 30 or so years. Life moves along at a surprisingly fast pace. Family, friends, life-events, church and community occupy our being; now isn't a good time to think about the fact that as long as we are living, we are in fact, dying ever so slightly, day by day.
Fifty shows up in our life's timeline, and we begin to think to the future more than we did previously. Retirement? That was something far off in the distance. Now, it is closer in time than the age of our children, and look how fast that time since they were toddlers flew by! Why, certainly it was only yesterday they were teething, learning to walk, heading to school, learning to drive ...
I don't think the speed of those years was anywhere near my radar.
But here I am, closer to 60 than 50. What did I expect? I can tell you what I didn't expect:
I didn't expect to be caring for an aging parent.
I was completely unaware that parent care and decision making would be this hard.
I didn't expect to be still driving a vehicle made during the previous decade.
I didn't expect healthcare costs to be so high. (Only two more payments and Mr. Berens' heart surgery is all ours, folks. We own that thing.)
I really didn't expect that we would own a flock of sheep.
As another life decade approaches, (and no, I am still a few years away from a birthday that begins with 6 and ends with 0) it sometimes makes me ask questions for which I have no answers.
Will we have enough income when it's time to retire?
Will I be healthy? How about Mr. Berens? What if someone had to have nursing care?
Ugh. It's not good to dwell there. Yes, make the precautions, set up the plan, but keep from dwelling on a future that is entirely unknown. I do know that the Good Lord has always provided and taken care of us—me, even when hearts were broken. I know that is the one thing I can expect from my future—that He will take care of us—me—until the last breath.
Bev Berens is a freelance writer and FFA parent from Holland, Mich. She can be contacted at uphillfarm494@yahoo.com.