“Amen, amen, I say to you, when you were younger, you used to dress yourself and go where you wanted; but when you grow old, you will stretch out your hands, and someone else will dress you and lead you where you do not want to go.” // John 21:18
“Don’t put me in the corner,” my mom said over her shoulder as we daughters giggled at the kitchen counter, home from college and our lives away, home for Christmas to enjoy fudge, caroling, and the hilarious gag gifts my third-born sister always exchanged with our brother, the youngest. “Mom, pretty sure you could kick all our butts so that won’t even be an option,” my one sister crowed as we roared a bit. She was quite into fitness so the prospect of her lifting one of us up sounded about right.
My family of four girls and one boy had lively holidays, so lively that significant others who were invited often felt they couldn’t get a word in edgewise as laughter and interruptions were constant.
Looking back now to that time, twenty years ago, I see what she meant. As older adults grow older, they are “put in the corner” so to speak. Their opinions can be written off as speckled with age like the spots on the back of their hands. They’re ignored or worse, disrespected openly.
But what Saint Peter heard from Jesus wasn’t some foreshadowing of his grandkids not getting off his lawn when he shook a cane at them. He would be led to his death, crucified as Our Lord, simply upside down instead.
Maybe when we age, as we age, we are led to the unexpected. Too many little and many big crosses that seemed as impossible as being put in the corner, ignored, or disregarded by our vibrant young family, a dynamic that shifts under our feet as we age. You and I probably won’t be literally crucified. But if we choose Our Lord and His way again and again, we will suffer many deaths.
I don’t want to die, heck, I don’t even want to be inconvenienced. And I certainly don’t want to give over my autonomy as I age. But if we are blessed with a long life, we will cede that over. Spiritually we are invited to accept these crosses, walk trustingly into these deaths, be led into God-knows-what and believe He is there, even unseen and unfelt.
Invite Our Lord into your family’s story, into the relationships with your aging loved ones, and entrust all that you are being led into directly into Jesus’ capable hands.
He is there, even unseen and unfelt. // Nell O'LearyClick to tweet
Nell O’Leary is the Managing Editor for Blessed is She, an attorney turned writer, speaker, and editor while tending to her husband and five kiddos. She also facilitates our community groups as she loves helping women find sisterhood. Her undergrad is in English from University of Minnesota and her J.D. from Ave Maria School of Law. Notably, she can down a hot cocoa in two seconds. Find out more about her here.
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