Just wanting to grow up

A few years ago, as a grandmother in seminary, one of the students asked me, “What do you want to be when you grow up?” It was his polite way of asking why a person my age would be going for a master’s degree in religious education.

I told him my goal has always been to become a sweet little old lady. He couldn’t make the connection. Others can’t either. They usually chuckle, but they really don’t know me very well. I need all the Bible education I can get. Without Christ, I am black and white to the extreme, critical, dogmatic, self-centered, and always right. While the Lord has changed me a great deal, He’s got more work to do. Much more. I’m far from sweet.

This sweet, little old lady talk has come up in all sorts of ways. My husband and I have been discussing old age. While we are both under 65 (for a few more days), we realize the clock keeps ticking. Also, we cared for my aging parents when they lived with us for one year (ten years ago). We look back at that experience with fondness and joy (my mom and dad were both sweet), yet we know it would have been even better for them and for us had they talked and planned earlier for this stage in their lives.

I don’t want my children to guess what to do with me if I can’t remember their names, or can’t turn my head to shoulder-check when I drive, or cannot see to read the phone bill or the phone numbers, or cannot walk well enough to get up and down stairs. I want them to know what to do with me, and I want to be cooperative and willing to go along with their decisions and actions.

People live longer these days, but that does not mean we will be strong in those years to come. I was reading today in Joshua 14 about Caleb. He was not a young man when God’s people finally conquered the land that God had promised them. However, at eighty-five he said, “As yet I am as strong this day as on the day the Moses sent me; just as my strength was then, so now is my strength for war, both for going out and for coming in.”

Caleb had a great attitude. In his old age he asked Joshua, “Now therefore, give me this mountain of which the LORD spoke in that day; for you heard in that day how the Anakim (“giants”) were there, and that the cities were great and fortified. It may be that the LORD will be with me, and I shall be able to drive them out as the Lord said.”

Caleb might have been old, but he was fighting fit, and ready for any challenge God put before him.

Maybe I should aim higher, change that “sweet little old lady” goal to “Christ-like warrior” or “powerful witness to God’s grace” or “tower of wisdom and strength.” But then again, I know myself; that first choice is the greater challenge.