Becoming more, and then so much more

I owe a deep and heartfelt apology to every person of significant years I've ever known. Some, it must be said, are getting this deep and heartfelt apology posthumously. After all, I'm a slow learner and sometimes, even slower to admit it when I'm wrong.

Life is not as I perceived it at 15. Or 21. Even at 30. Perhaps some of my perceptions on life even now, well past 50, may be in error. But I'm learning.

When I first became aware of my parents as "people," they were already old. And they stayed old in my mind, though my mother was only 49 when she died.

I've checked with others of similar years, and, for the most part, their experience mirrors my own. Their parents, too, were old from the beginning. And their grandparents? In a word -- ancient.

Believe it or not, it had little to do with outward appearance. My erroneous perceptions were wrapped up in how I believed they perceived themselves, life, death and the hereafter.

It's hard to put it into words, but I figured the closer you got to the end of your days, the less you cared about certain things.

For example, long-married couples surely had exhausted every possible subject under the heavens and welcomed any distraction that could rescue them from the same old company, the same tired lines, the same monotonous conversations.

Speaking now, as a long-married person, I know this simply isn't so. Danny and I have no difficulty passing many hours in conversations that span an even greater variety of subjects than when we were young. And we both are just as passionate and verbal about what we believe as we were at the tender age of 15. To be sure, some things have changed. In addition to some of the things we believed in then compared to what we believe now, and the changes those changes in beliefs have wrought, another thing that has changed is our vocabulary. It increased with time. We also have fine-tuned our interpersonal debating skills. (You can't even call them arguments anymore.)

I also once believed that old people didn't concern themselves overmuch with physical intimacy, the phrase from Proverbs 5:18 and 19 notwithstanding, and not only that, but hopes and dreams had long since been shelved.

Also false.

Just as I am much the same as I was at 17, though I am three times plus three that number now, so my mother-in-law is much the same as she was at 17, though she is nearly five times that number. Even though we may mature, gaining patience and perspective, the essence that defines us remains unchanged. Certainly, our physical appearance and abilities change, so much so that we may have trouble recognizing ourselves in a fleeting store-window reflection, but the inner essence remains essentially the same.

I still love, learn, grow, yearn, weep, even mourn, but most of all, I still hope. Perhaps in spite of all I have learned, or because of all that I've learned, the little girl of nine who cried out against injustice, cries out still. The 13-year-old who wept over the starving children in Bangladesh still finds a little extra in her grocery budget for those with less. The 14-year-old who nearly threw her life away is grateful every day that she was rescued. I was once all of these and so much more, and ever shall be, carrying the essence of who God made and then came to call his own, into eternity to him.

My deepest and most heartfelt apologies to those of significant years, for I once thought you became less, when you have become and are becoming still, so much more.

My sure and certain hope is this. We're not done yet. Even after crossing the threshold between this life and eternity, we've got miles to go before we're done. Eternity should be just long enough to finally become all that God intends us to be.

"He has made everything beautiful in its time. He has also set eternity in the hearts of men; yet they cannot fathom what God has done from beginning to end." Ecclesiastes 3:11 (NIV)