Leaning on a cane, I hobbled into my friend’s house. I noticed her mangled toes. I was surprised since I’ve not seen her without pointed-toe shoes with high heels for 30 years. How did her feet get that bad? Living large like we all have.
She noticed my stare. “I can’t wear shoes anymore. I don’t drive, either.” She led me into her living room. “How was your drive?”
I answered her question with the same panic I had endured in the car. “We made the seven-hour trip in six hours. With my eyes closed, my head on my lap, feet welded to the floor, my stomach flip-flopping, I made it without too much grumbling. I grabbed the seat, held on and cried out for deliverance. I glared at the double line and begged my son not to go over it.”
I said, “Stephen, I can’t go through another accident. I’m still recuperating from the last one. Have mercy on me.”
My friend offered me a cup of coffee and asked if I’d like to lie down on her sofa.
With my nerves still on high alert, I tried to calm down. “Do you remember when Jesus told Peter he would grow old and he would be carried where he didn’t want to go? That was a far-fetched idea when I heard it then. That wasn’t going to happen to me. Well, it’s happening now.
“Let me put it this way. Since I still can’t drive, I must rely on family members to drive me. My son was kind enough to bring me to visit you, my friend. I need to remember that. I shouldn’t grumble.”
Then I asked a question that had been on my mind for the past year since the accident and my 53 visits to the physical therapist. “Will we ever be able to return to normal?”
She shook her head. “I don’t think so.”
“And maybe you don’t want to put on those high heel shoes again. You have a good excuse not to wear them.”
“Could be.”
“I’ve stepped down from leadership and scaled down my commitments. I’ve spent a lot of time at home in prayer; I keep writing and I make sure my Sweet Al is safe. I guess this is what the new normal looks like?”
I listened to Keanu Reeves in a video on YouTube. He had a recent encounter with God. He played the John Wick character and is a recipient of numerous accolades in a career on screen spanning four decades. He understands about getting older. His message was for the older people who are giving up, no longer in the spotlight, no longer relevant or feeling like their life is spiraling the drain.
He said, “Older people believe lies from the devil and they quit living.” The next sentence is the one that hit me in the face and set my mind to thinking about our last days. “Your deepest pain might be your greatest assignment. Do you want to miss God’s greatest call on your life?”
I said to my friend, “Maybe this new normal is that in our deepest pain we find our greatest assignment and we need to accept it with a cheerful heart. People see us differently in our physically impaired state. They are watching as we walk out our faith, being stretched beyond what we’ve ever experienced before. At this time of life, maybe we are in our greatest assignment and we don’t even know it.”
She said, “At this time of life, I pray I won’t grumble. It’s my biggest fault.” She used the example, “When I go to McDonald’s and I buy a senior citizen’s cup of coffee for 69 cents, I tell the little boy behind the counter, who is wearing a hoodie over his head with his long sleeves, ‘Take off your hoodie so I can see your eyes. Roll up your sleeve and don’t drag it through my coffee.’ Can you believe I tell them to do all of that for a 69-cent cup of coffee?”
I know what she means. Maybe our hardest assignment is to stay sweet when it hurts to stand or walk. When we check into a handicap room, we find the bed 4 feet tall and we have to get someone to help us get into bed. They have a low, step-in tub with a slick surface and tell us that we they don’t have a walk-in shower. And no bar to hang onto with the lowest commode possible. I am sure the people who design the handicap rooms have not been impaired. They have no idea. They just hear our complaints.
Older people want it to be what we call normal. But, things are not normal anymore. Because we can’t drive ourselves, we need to let others drive us. That means, when my son is fiddling with the GPS and I say, I’ve been there a thousand times, I can tell you how to get there.”
He says, “Please, let me drive, Mother.” I need to let him.
Or when my daughter is driving at a slow crawl, looking at messages and dog pictures coming in on her phone or applying mascara to her eyelashes, I need to learn to sit back and let her drive. After all, she takes her day off to drive me to doctors’ appointments and physical therapy.
My job and my hardest assignment is showing gratitude to the Lord for letting me live a full life. And being kind to those who have put their lives on hold to help me.
Final brushstroke: In this new normal, we are trying to live sweetly with a cane in hand and staying relevant to this younger generation. Most of all, understanding God might have left the biggest assignment for us to do in our lifetime — stay sweet in a world in which we need others to help us.
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