Aging with Grace (eBook)

Foreword

Karen Hodge

Women’s Ministry Coordinator, Presbyterian Church in America

When do you start to finish? Today is the day!

Inside every older woman is a little girl trying to figure out who she will be when she grows up. We long to flourish and thrive, not just in old age but right here and now. When I was twenty-nine and struggling with this question (and, by the way, I still am), Susan and Sharon entered my life. I watched and learned the shape of godliness from their lives. I can testify after serving alongside them twenty-plus years that they are still “full of sap and green” (Ps. 92:14). Now they have written what they have learned about aging with grace. This is the book I need now, and it’s the book I want to give to younger women.

Are we promised tomorrow? Today is the day!

The word of God describes life like a mist or a blade of grass (Ps. 103:15). Our season for flourishing is fleeting and temporal, but eternity is forever. Living in light of eternity impacts not just us, but our children’s children. “But the steadfast love of the Lord is from everlasting to everlasting on those who fear him, / and his righteousness to children’s children, / to those who keep his covenant / and remember to do his commandments” (Ps. 103:17–18). The pages of this book remind us to begin with the end in mind, that our reference point for life is God, and that his word is our authority. “The grass withers, the flower fades, / but the word of our God will stand forever” (Isa. 40:8).

Do you desire to flourish to the finish? Today is the day!

Remember my friends, we are not running this race alone. We are surrounded by many who were faithful to the finish. Run with the women Sharon and Susan introduce us to in this book. They will disciple you to lay aside the life-taking thinking and actions that encumber you. Run with women in your church by studying this book together and helping one another divert your gaze from the worldly anti-aging culture and fix your eyes on Jesus. (A leader’s guide is available.) Start running, sister, and run until we get home (Heb. 12:1–2)!

Only one life ’twill soon be past.

Only what is done for Christ will last.1

Now join me in a conversation with Sharon and Susan.

———

Karen Hodge: When did you start thinking about aging?

Sharon Betters: My husband, Chuck, was twenty-one when he became pastor of a small church. Because my childhood pastor’s wife taught a Bible study, I thought I should too. Every week five elderly women sat at our table and let me teach them. Who did I think I was? Yet they loved and encouraged me, listening as though I knew what I was doing. They were life-givers. But there were also a couple of elderly women who scared me with their sharp tongues and criticism of my husband’s preaching and leadership. They were life-takers. All of these women were rooted in the church, yet not all of them offered kindness and love. That’s when I started my quest to understand God’s view of aging and how I could intentionally prepare to be the sweet, life-giving old lady who encouraged young women just starting out in life.

Susan Hunt: I think my obsession with thinking about being an older woman was largely due to my passion for and commitment to the Titus 2 mandate that older women “are to teach what is good, and so train the young women” (Titus 2:3–4). I wondered when I would be an older woman. Now, my aging body assures me I am one, and I love the perspective from this season of life.

Karen: What prompted you to write about aging?

Sharon: Even though we are both older women—I’m seventy-two and Susan is eighty—it’s doubtful either of us would have thought about writing this book. However, a workshop I was asked to teach on purposefully preparing for old age resonated with older and younger women. I laughed when some of them asked me to write a book.

Susan: When Nancy DeMoss Wolgemuth asked me to speak on the Titus 2 older woman for a True Woman conference, I was shocked at the response from women of all ages. Sharon and I began discussing the question, “What does God say about aging?” We studied Scripture and prayed. Between us we have forty-two children and grandchildren (including spouses). We were compelled to write what we learned for our generation and theirs. It feels outlandish to write about ending well when we haven’t ended, but we do not write only about what we have experienced; we write about what God’s word tells us. We are awestruck by his calling and promise for this season of life.

Karen: Why do you believe our culture is anti-aging?

Sharon: American culture idolizes youth and measures value by what a person produces for society. When older people stop contributing financially through working, show signs of wear and tear, and slow down mentally and physically, culture considers us worthless. Some see the elderly as a drain on society. Why wouldn’t I dread aging when I have been trained to chase after youth and do everything I can to slow down the inexorable march into old age? Unless we are purposeful in fighting the throw-away, anti-aging messages with a biblical worldview, we will face this season with fear, dread, and denial.

Susan: Secular psychiatrist Carl Jung first coined the phrase “the afternoon of life” and defined it as fifty-six to eighty-three years of age. He said: “Wholly unprepared, we embark upon the second half of life. Or are there perhaps colleges for forty-year-olds which prepare them for their coming life and its demands as the ordinary colleges introduce our young people to a knowledge of the world?”2 To answer Jung’s question, the world cannot prepare us because it has no hope or power to give us. Culture’s false narrative about aging is the church’s opportunity to proclaim the hope and power of the gospel to equip God’s people to flourish even in old age.

Karen: How do you approach the topic in this book?

Susan: Our approach is very simple—we asked the Lord to teach us how to glorify him as older women, we studied the Scriptures, and we share some of the things we learned. We alternate; I write a chapter on Thinking Biblically about aging using Psalms 92 and 71, then Sharon writes a chapter on Living Covenantally in old age. This was an interdependent endeavor. Our ideas flowed into each other’s work, our voices became one in our desire to “glorify the God and Father of our Lord Jesus Christ” (Rom. 15:6).

Sharon: Throughout Scripture we often see an explanation followed by an example. The Living Covenantally chapters are examples of the explanation in the Thinking Biblically chapters. We don’t consider ourselves experts on aging with grace, so we selected older women in Scripture who illustrate the principles in Susan’s chapters. I soon knew I was on holy ground. I often paused and whispered, “What am I missing? Tell me your story. Let me get inside your skin and show me the treasures hidden in your soul.” I am forever changed by getting to know these matriarchs better, and we pray you will be too. They show us what aging with grace looks like and how this is not an independent endeavor—it happens in community with God’s people.

Karen: Is there a prevailing theme you do not want readers to miss?

Sharon: Yes! We want readers to truly believe that the Bible gives us not only the promise of bearing fruit in old age, but it also gives us a road map to grow and flourish in this grace. We want readers to ask, “What if aging, though challenging, is not a season of purposelessness, but rather an opportunity to discover our true identity in a way we couldn’t in the first half of life? What if we purposefully prepare for the afternoon of life while we are in the first half of life?” And for those already in the afternoon of life—perhaps ill-prepared, feeling worthless, and rudderless—we want them to know it’s not too late to experience God’s grace and, through his work, make an eternal impact in this season of life.

Susan: Our point is that aging with grace, or what the Bible calls growing in grace, is impossible apart from God’s grace. When the disciples asked Jesus, “‘Who then can be saved?’ . . . Jesus looked at them and said, ‘With man this is impossible, but with God all things are possible’” (Matt. 19:25–26). This book is not a list of ideas to become a gracious older woman. It’s about the life-long adventure of God giving his children the desire and ability to do all things—even aging with grace—through him who strengthens us (Phil. 4:13). We have no nifty formulas to give you. Actually, there is nothing new in this book; but we don’t need anything new. God has given us the means of grace—his word, prayer, worship, sacraments, fellowship—to grow in our relationship with him. And he says to us, “Stand by the roads, and look, / and ask for the ancient paths / where...