I don’t like to clean. There….I said it. It’s true. Growing up, I was the child in the family who rammed and crammed school work into my desk and hid food under the bed. But as I’ve grown older, while I still don’t like to tidy up and clean, I have come to appreciate the sense of accomplishment and order that doing so brings to me. It just seems better to wake up with a sense of freshness and order to the house. And because of that, while I still don’t like cleaning, I’m much better at the process and can even see it as a bit of an escape from too much thinking at times.
I think the same is true of our lives. Perhaps we have rammed and crammed too many things into our lives. Perhaps we have tried to hide metaphorical food away. Perhaps now would be a good time to bring a new sense of cleansing and order to our lives.
Within the last two years, my entire perspective about my life has changed. Like many of my friends, we are into our 60’s now. For as long as I can remember, I’ve viewed aging as something where we fade into oblivion as one approaches retirement.
It seemed like a time where we just settle. We settle for the status quo. We settle for a fixed income and paycheck. We settle for our aging bodies and our health. We settle into grandparenting and being senior citizens as our parents and grandparents did.
However, something amazing happened to me as I reached that milestone and beyond. Instead of looking at my life from age 0 to 60 and beyond as something insignificant and being past my prime, my view of aging completely shifted.
I now am looking at my life from age 100 and going backwards. And I have realized that I now have 40 more years! 40 more years to be significant! 40 more years to make a difference! 40 more years to learn! 40 more years to set and achieve new goals! 40 more years of purpose and passion to do that which I was uniquely created to do by God.
If you’d have asked me two years ago if I would have felt this way today, the answer would have been no. And, although there is no guarantee that I will be granted 40 more years, I intend to spend every day that I do have left living, learning, and loving as God created me to do. I am not done yet….and neither are you.