I Can Start Aging

Had a great typo on the screen tonight at church.  While singing "Song of Hope" during the worship service, the line came up "All things new, I can start aging."  If you're not familiar with the song (great song by the way) it should be "I can start again."  It may be a typo, but thinking about it, there's something about the typo that, for me, rings pretty true.

I think I've said all this before, but I struggled quite a bit with turning 30.  40 wasn't so bad, but as 50 approaches I find myself really embracing the years ahead.  Aren't we supposed to dread those decades more as they come instead of less?  So what's different?

When I turned 30, I'd dropped out of the ministry already and was really struggling with a lack of direction in my life.  Something about being 30 means you're really an adult now and there's this feeling you should really be establishing yourself in life.  I suppose it's all that stuff about how you're supposed to be successful, yet here I was struggling to just make ends meet.  I think I was discouraged with where my life was, where it was going, with how I wasn't doing what I thought I'd be doing in my life.  Turning 30 was a sort of exclamation point on this feeling of failure.

What is really different now has a lot to do with how my faith has really renewed in the last several years.  Okay, honestly I'm not so sure it's about my faith, that kind of sounds like "I got better."  I'm still, like all the rest of us, a broken person who's pretty lost on my own.  Maybe what's different is coming to terms with God's grace, starting to understand that God's really not sitting there waiting for me to screw up yet again so he can rub my nose in it.  I've started to see him instead looking at me saying I've got something better for you.  It's not really anything about me, but maybe just finally starting to understand what He's wanting for me, and perhaps starting to let Him take care of my life instead of trying to handle everything about it myself.  

I preached it for a number of years, but it's just taken this long to start to understand more personally what is meant by God making all things new.

So yeah, like the song says, I can start again.  And there's something amazing about starting again.  Now there's something about life to be enjoyed, in fact to be treasured.  I'm finding a sense of purpose.  And that's why it seems appropriate to me that, with all things new, I can start aging.  Being in my late 40's is every okay.  Turning 50 is not something I dread, but embrace.  I hope I can feel the same about 60, 70 and beyond.  Life is something to be enjoyed because there's something even more incredible ahead.  Hope and anticipation become very real.  

I've screwed some things up pretty badly in my life.  If I were to dwell on it, there's a lot I could regret about what I've done.  I cannot ever undo the hurt I've caused and cannot try to pretend that my attitudes, actions and decisions didn't wreak havoc at times in lives of others.  Maybe the best way to say it is, I wish I had done a number of things differently over the years.  But I did them, and I can't change that.  But I guess what's different now is that I know that through Christ, through God's mercy, I do know that He makes all things new.  I don't have to live in the past.  My future is no longer seen through a rear view mirror.  All things are new.  Life is pretty darn good.  I can start aging, and actually find myself looking forward to it.

How Old is Too Old to Save a Life?

Recently former Vice President Dick Cheney received a heart transplant.  Since then there has been an array of stories and commentaries on whether at age 71 he was too old to receive a heart transplant such as this one on Yahoo.  Some of the commentaries were pretty harsh.  I bring this up because there is something in the tone of the articles that raises concerns for those of us who are in our 40's and up.  I really do fear this is just the beginning of this kind of discussion.

The gist of the articles is that typically 70-72 is the cut off age for receiving a transplant.  Many people are turning this into an ethical issue, though I suspect politics are behind a lot of that.  I honestly doubt there would be as much discussion if it were Nancy Pelosi who had the transplant.  Granted, you would probably see more conservative commentators making it an ethical issue.  Regardless of the politics or what ever I thought about the person having the transplant, the question of whether one is too old ethically to receive a transplant is troubling to me.

One thing most articles do not mention is that the reason for the supposed cut off age is not an ethical one but a medical one.  Ultimately whether you can receive a transplant isn't a matter of being too old but whether your body has a chance of recovering from such a surgery.

When we start to make this an ethical issue that says after a certain age a person should be allowed to die rather than receive life saving surgery, we're in a lot of trouble.  Right now it's sort of a fringe debate.  However, with projections such as those that say we'll have 900,000 people over 100 by the 2040's, you can pretty much bet the farm that this will become more and more of a hot button issue in the next 10 to 20 years.  The shift to a more elderly population in that time frame is going to create a strain on medical resources in a way we can only begin to imagine and there will be some backlash, even more so if by that time we move to a system that rations health care.  There will be backlash due to that strain, and I really believe you will see a growing sentiment against providing any form of extraordinary care to someone beyond a certain age.

For people in my age range, reaching that age is still a ways off.  But it's something to be aware of because by the time we get there, the effects and fallout from the aging of the Boomer generation will be full blown.

So maybe now's not too early to start the discussion?