“Your life narrows down,” she said looking around her room.
Dec. 18 would have been my mama’s birthday, if she hadn’t already passed on to her heavenly home. I’ve been thinking about her.
One day after she had moved into the assisted living home, having vascular brain disease (small mini strokes causing her to have dementia-like symptoms from the brain damage) she started talking about how life changed for her.
“You have a wide range of friends and work and a life full of people and things to do. A house full of what you have gathered to make a home. Then as you get older, things get smaller. Friends die and your circle of friends lessens. You retire from work, and there is less work and activity. Now I live here and don’t need all those things I worked hard to get. Life gets down to this one room with a few things from my life to remind me of my memories.”
It’s true.
Maybe we need to be reminded of that truth as we go through our lives and the Christmas season.
My good friend and her Sunday school class went caroling to members of her church who were shut in or had trouble getting out.
“This made my Christmas!” one elderly single lady said from her doorway.
“Thank you so much for remembering us,” another couple remarked!
“Everyone was so glad to see us, and some sang along with us. We enjoyed seeing them smile and express how much it meant to them,” my friend commented as we talked on the phone.
This year for the first time, I think, I didn’t put up a Christmas tree. Usually, we drag down all the plastic tubs of Christmas decorations and ornaments we have gathered up all along the years, and I enjoy going down memory lane as I select what to use to decorate that year.
This year, I didn’t want to go down memory lane. I’m not sure why. Maybe there were just too many memories to handle, and I want to focus on the future?
Some say the only constant is change.
Family life changes. Our lives change. Our circumstances change.
Do the changes in your life excite your or frustrate you? Make you optimistic or depressed? Make you want to hold on to what has been or embrace what is to come?
In a lifetime of changes, we can depend on our relationship with Christ to remain the same and only increase in depth and beauty with time. Our spiritual walk with God, Jesus Christ, and the Holy Spirit will only grow sweeter—-if we allow it to, and work for it to, and encourage it to.
He is unchanging, dependable, loving, and constant.
Hebrews 13:8 tells us, “Jesus Christ is the same yesterday and today and forever.”
Jeremiah 29:11 says, “For I know the plans I have for you, declares the Lord, plans for welfare and not for evil, to give you a future and a hope.”
Embrace your future and hold onto your hope.
Narrowing down can be a good thing. . .
Merry Christmas and prayers for all to have Blessed New Year.
