Better with age?

This year, I hit a milestone birthday.  It felt really strange to begin a new decade, and new half-century, but now that I'm passed it, it doesn't really feel any different.  I'm actually in better physical shape that I have been since high school and I have no major aches or pains or disabilities...I've been very blessed!  But I have noticed something has changed with the passing of time.  It's my heart...

I think I'm wired a bit differently than most people; I've always looked for honesty from others, constructive criticism, and correction when I've been in error. And I've been pretty accommodating and flexible over the years; change was never really difficult for me.  However, something seems to have changed over the last few years; I'm suddenly aware that I don't bend the way I used to and I'm more easily offended, especially by those closest to me. And I'm taken back to a Scripture I read in the last few days from Ezekiel, in which God speaks of a heart of stone and a heart of flesh.  I realize that maybe what's happening is that my heart is starting to harden; maybe it's like the clay on the potter's wheel.  If that clay is not continually shaped and molded, watered and reworked, it will become hard and stony.  If the clay does not remain supple and pliable in the potter's hands, it will, with the passing of time, become rigid and will, in fact, begin to shrink.  Maybe that's what's been changing...I fear I'm not yielding to the Potter's hands as I once used to. Oh, I hear His voice and feel His touch as I read the Scriptures, but perhaps I'm not as receptive to His voice as I hear it through those around me.  When someone tells me, honestly and in love, that my tone was angry or my words cutting, my pride is stepping in and keeping me from making a change. Instead, I sit, doing nothing, like a clay pot on a motionless wheel, hardening. I find myself repeating the words of the apostle Paul: "I do the things I don't want to, and don't do the things I should." I don't want to be inflexible, like clay that becomes useless with the passing of time.  It is my soul's desire to remain receptive and yielding, a mature woman with a heart of flesh!



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Hey, I'm still here!

I took a walk today in the late afternoon, and was inspired by the beauty around me...an unseasonably warm day, blue skies and the rustling leaves beneath my feet.  There's really nothing like the fall in Michigan; some days just take my breath away!  This was one of those days. 

As I drank in the day, my mind turned to this page, one on which I haven't written for nearly six months.  So much has happened during these many days, and yet, at the same time, so little.  My life, once busy and filled with schedules, rehearsals, phone appointments and late nights, has become a model of simplicity.  My days were always about what I was doing...now, my days are about being.  My adult life has, in some ways, come full circle: when I got married, my focus was on being a wife, then a mother, teacher, production manager, director.  Now, I'm back around to simply wife and mother.  Most of my teaching is done, and, although one is never done being a mom, much of my day-to-day "mothering" has diminished.  Wife I'll always be, as long as the Lord sees fit. There's so much more quiet in my days now; I make dinners again, I bake and I clean. And so, each morning, I take time to listen to the voice of my Father, as He leads me through days of non-complexity. And therein I find contentment...not happiness or sadness, boredom or confusion...but contentment, knowing that, through busyness or simplicity, the Anchor to my soul is sure and He alone is my Treasure. It is by His grace alone that I stand.