A Key of Life when You Get Toward 70 Years Old

I was playing in the backyard pool with my great granddaughter. Let’s call her Natasha. At 81, I’m in the deepwater part of the pool of life, laying back and relaxing. At 4 Natasha is in the shallow end of the pool of life, jumping up and down, splashing, frolicking, and squealing.

I can see where she is, and she reminds me of Australia where I came from – a different country, and at a different time. I was born in World War II, and I recall noisy airforce planes streaking across the sky in a small town far from the big smoke. My country was at war.

Natasha lives in a big city, where the noise is different, coming from cars and trucks moving and blasting their horns, but her country is at peace, at least in the homeland.

Natasha asked me to play with her on her inflatable raft. While wondering what I could do to make it fun, I recalled in my college days going to the beach with a few buddies. We tried to join hands and stand up on a large tractor tube. It’s immensely difficult to do in calm water, and hopeless when waves keep coming at you.

With this memory in mind, I hoisted Natasha up on the raft, and held her hands a she tried to stand up. We laughed and laughed. She did surprisingly well. Click on the image to see the video, or click here. Then hit back arrow to return.

It struck me that Natasha is not afraid to try new things — learning, investigating, experimenting. This is what you do at this age. I have done this also – for most of my life as a scientist. But what do you do after 70?

Then I recalled – I had been asked to do the scripture reading in church a few Sundays ago. My church has a lot of volunteering, and I put my hand up. It’s a small church, only a couple hundred if that many, but I was nervous as the last time I did this was about 25 years ago in a huge Methodist church in Houston. I think it went well this time. I was doing something new, and in a small way I was helping in the church service. This was part of my answer to “What do you do after 70?”

But there is another part of the answer. This morning in church, the pastor preached about kindness, from Galatians chapter 5 in the Bible. He said kindness is love in action. I was reminded of a kindness I nearly screwed up, about two weeks ago.

I was registering at a foot-and-ankle doctor’s office when the clerk said I owed an extra $25 for an unpaid bill. I reacted to this because I always pay my bills at home. I said I hadn’t seen a bill, and didn’t want to pay it here and now because I may have already paid it at home. The clerk played hardball, and said if I didn’t pay it now I would have to make another appointment. That ticked me off, my pride feared up, and I actually thought seriously about walking out and leaving the office.

As I stood in front of the exit, I cooled down and figured leaving would mean another appointment. My personal rebellion wasn’t worth it – just pay the $25, I told myself, biting my tongue. I paid and sat back down.

While I was sitting there, a woman dressed in black came to the door, opened it, and shuffled in. Shuffle is right because she could barely walk — something was wrong with her feet. After she checked in, I heard her say, “I need to get my purse from the car.” She turned toward the door. I jumped up and offered to get the purse for her. She was grateful and gave me the car key. As I opened the car door, she instructed me to find the purse under a jacket hanging over the passenger seat. As I gave the purse to her, she smiled and said thank you.

A few minutes later she sat down beside me and told me that her doctor in this clinic, after a year of misdiagnosis and pain, had found the problem was a floating bone chip in her foot. “The doctor was an angel,” she said. Just recently, she had tripped on something and once again could only shuffle in pain. I said I would pray for her, as I went for my appointment.

I told my doctor, who was also the doctor of the woman in black, that she was an angel. She smiled brightly when I explained.

This morning in church I remembered my act of kindness at the clinic, and how I had almost missed it by letting my pride get in the way. As I thought about this, it dawned on me that looking for opportunities to do acts of kindness, big or little, is the other part of the answer to, “What do you do after 70?”

I’ve been watching Little House on the Prairie with a close friend that I assist in her caregiving. The show is a litany of kindness acts in well-constructed tales of a family who lived in the horse and buggy days. It’s a sentimental reminder that love and kindness, a hallmark of Jesus’ teaching, is a key to life here, no matter what age. And, I believe, it’s also a key to life after here.

The fruit of the Spirit is love, joy, peace, forbearance, kindness, goodness, faithfulness, gentleness and self-control. [Galations, chapter 5]