Category: Aging with Grace

Aging through Grief to Service

Good Friday seems an appropriate day to discuss grief.

At any stage in our journey of Aging with Grace, we may suffer grief. The loss may be small or huge, sometimes causing us to feel as if all progress in our lives has stopped.

  • As young adults we might grieve the necessity of choosing one path over another, or the realization that we might not achieve what we had hoped. We might mourn the loss of a relationship that we thought would be “the one.” In our twenties and thirties, a “quarter-life crisis” for some, we might find that we aren’t as far along a career or relationship path as we thought we might be. We might be lonely and wonder if we will ever find love.
  • Grief might hit us in our middle-age years if we miscarry, our parents die, we suffer through an unwanted divorce, or our child falls seriously ill.
  • If we are blessed with a long life, we will face many losses. We lose the constant companionship of our children as they grow up and move away. Even grandchildren will eventually be too old to nestle into grandma’s lap. Many of us will lose our spouses and dear friends to death. We will adjust over and over to new health issues, grieving the loss of pain-free joints and sharp vision or hearing or thinking, while possibly relying on a cane or walker or wheelchair. We may need to move from our home, letting go of sentimental attachment to things. We mourn losing our healthy bodies or quick minds. We grieve the way society sees aging as a weakness—or doesn’t see us at all.

In A Woman’s Guide to Healing the Heartbreak of Divorce, Rose Sweet contrasts fear and faith in the midst of grieving:

  • Fear – I don’t want to grieve any more. It’s too big. It’s too painful. I’m sick of it. I want to move on. It doesn’t feel good. What will people think if I’m weak with grief? Why can’t I just avoid it? I’ll be fine, really I will, won’t I?
  • Faith – I know God has given me tears for a reason. He designed me to grieve so that I could heal. I will not be afraid of the pain, knowing He will give me His grace to get through it. After all, God’s people wept. Jesus wept. I am not alone.

Marilyn Willett Heavilin, wrote Roses in December: Comfort for the Grieving Heart to offer hard-won advice. I’ll quote just a few of her points and recommend her book highly:

  • Knowing that God cares doesn’t take the hurt away, but it does make the hurt bearable.
  • God has experienced sorrow. He, in fact, was a bereaved parent, because He, too, had a Son who suffered and died. But the exciting news is God’s Son didn’t stay dead. He conquered death for each of us so that we can have the hope of spending eternity with Him in heaven. We also can have the hope of seeing our loved ones again.
  • Life is never the same after a loved one dies or you suffer some other major loss. But life can be good again—different—but good.
  • Don’t feel you must rush into any big decisions. Do your grief work. Give yourself time. Seek God’s heart and let Him guide you into the unique purpose He has for you.

His purpose for you, in time, will be to serve others. Yet, for now, what do we do with our grief? For a while, grief will keep us from being available to help others; we simply don’t have the energy or the inclination. (This might be the time to accept help from others.) When grief hits us hard, we can’t continue on our own. Grief can freeze us in place and threaten to make us bitter or always angry or hopeless. At these times, we must turn to another kind of Aging with Grace, beyond maintaining a positive attitude. We must let go, trusting and believing that God has a beautiful plan that sometimes comes with pain, yet is still beautiful and always loving. We must ask God for His grace, His loving strength. Then, relying on God, resting in His arms, we go on, and at some point, we begin to recognize His gifts again and know we are loved.

(If grief is prolonged and accompanied by appetite or sleep changes with a lack of enjoyment for what once used to bring joy, consider talking to a professional. Depression is treatable!)

I’m reminded of Jesus on the night before His crucifixion. He gathered His beloved followers for one last supper. He went out into the garden, into nature. He prayed.

When his disciples were grieving after His death, they gathered together and, when the Spirit came and moved them, they went out and proclaimed His Good News. They began to share about their Savior, and they served others.

So, if we follow Jesus’ example, and that of those who knew Him best, we should:

  • Spend time in nature and prayer.
  • Gather with those who are supportive.
  • Share a meal with loved ones.
  • Wait on the Spirit to direct us.
  • Go out and serve others.

(It strikes me that most of these are parts of our church services, too.)

Serving others, making this tragedy that you mourn work somehow for the good of others, is a wonderful antidote to grief. The author I quoted above, Marilyn Willett Heavilin, lost three sons at three different times. She eventually was able to share, through writing and speaking, about her own experience with grief and how God supported her through His Word, her church community, and her friends.

When our daughter was diagnosed with Tourette Syndrome, my first reaction was strong denial, but eventually I accepted the diagnosis and went on to help two other women start a local support group. When depression struck members of our family, I began to study counseling, and I hope now that by using what I learned, my writing helps people through similar circumstances.

Some people may be called to a new career or volunteer position that strives to keep others from experiencing the grief they’ve known, such as Mothers Against Drunk Driving or Alcoholics Anonymous. Others may simply reach out to help their neighbors or friends through uplifting notes, or a hot dinner. Perhaps our limitations allow us only to pray for others, yet that may be the greatest gift of our lives.

Last week, Necessary Losses taught us, “As we near the end of our lives, we find meaning by leaving the world better for the next generation.” When you serve others, some sadness will remain, yet your struggle will gain meaning, and that can heal your heart.

Let us go forth to love and serve our Lord… and God’s people.

Thank you for sharing your Lenten journey with me. May your (Good Friday) grief eventually lead you to (Easter) joy!

Betty Arrigotti

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categories Aging with Grace | | datetime April 7, 2023 9:53 am | comments Comments Off on Aging through Grief to Service

Aging Through Losses

“… how happy others are because of you.” What a wonderful measure for our lives.

This week we ponder the Losses that life requires, and the growth those losses bring. We look back at earlier stages and can see the wisdom in growing. Let’s hold, in our current stage, to the belief that there is wisdom in letting go.

Those of you who’ve read my posts over the years know I’m very impressed by the wisdom of Judith Viorst. How can we talk about Aging with Grace without looking at the losses aging entails? In her book, Necessary Losses, Viorst discusses the “loves, illusions, dependencies, and impossible expectations that all of us have to give up in order to grow.”

She writes:

In the course of our life we leave and are left and let go of much that we love. Losing is the price we pay for living. It is also the source of much of our growth and gain. Making our way from birth to death, we also have to make our way through the pain of giving up and giving up and giving up some portion of what we cherish.

We have to deal with our necessary losses.

We should understand how these losses are linked to our gains.

There is plenty we must give up in order to grow. For we cannot deeply love anything without becoming vulnerable to loss. And we cannot become separate people, responsible people, connected people, reflective people without some losing and leaving and letting go.

Our life or growth could be seen as a progression of letting go, followed by the gain a new stage brings:

  • Childhood’s End – We give up a belief that we can be kept safe and receive instead the freedom and responsibility to make our own choices. We accept reality, and with it accept that we don’t get special treatment, absolute control, compensation for past loss, or perfect companions. We don’t blame our current lives on our childhood.
  • The Married State – We learn that no person can meet all our expectations all of the time, nor can some expectations ever be met. Our spouse can’t make us be happy, heal all our hurts from the past, or fill all our needs. Those unfulfilled expectations are necessary losses in order to truly love our less-than-perfect spouses.
  • Letting Children Go – In parenting we fear our imperfect love will harm our children, or we will fail to keep them safe. Facing our fallibility as parents is another of our necessary losses. We must let our children become steadily more independent and let go of them and our dreams for them.
  • The Loss of Youth – Time will repeatedly force us to relinquish our self-image and move on. We leave youth and health behind. We lose abilities and strengths. We let go of dreams as we realize we’ll never accomplish them all. Yet we gain experience, inner depth, acceptance of others, patience, and self-control. We move from body preoccupation to body transcendence. We move from identifying ourselves by what we do or who we parent to who we are. We can become an integrated whole, accepting our weaknesses along with our strengths.
  • The Loss of our Loved Ones – Mourning is the process of adapting to the losses in our lives. We travel through and revisit stages of numbness, denial, intense emotional pain, bargaining, anger, guilt, and idealizing whom or what we lost. But as we find our way through the mourning and learn to let go of our pain, we can come to acceptance. (We will take a closer look at grief next week.)
  • We live enriched lives, knowing that each day is vital. We make the most of the present to find a way to leave a legacy to the world for the future.

“Indeed, I count everything as loss because of the surpassing worth of knowing Christ Jesus my Lord. For his sake I have suffered the loss of all things and count them as rubbish, in order that I may gain Christ and be found in him.” Philippians 3:8-9

Being alive means we will suffer loss. But the loss will open us to new possibilities. Jesus lost his life, but by doing so, regained for us the Kingdom of God. He rose to new life so that we will, too. In that life, there will be no loss.

Perhaps opening our hands to let go allows us to receive new gifts.

Perhaps this process of letting go, if done well, makes room for God.

Blessings on your week!

Betty Arrigotti

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categories Aging with Grace | | datetime March 31, 2023 9:49 am | comments Comments Off on Aging Through Losses

Aging with Health and Limitations

In order to improve our chances of aging with health, Andrew Weil, M.D., in his book. Healthy Aging: A Lifelong Guide to Your Well-being offers 12 recommendations:

  1. Eat an anti-inflammatory diet.
  2. Use dietary supplements wisely to support the body’s defenses and natural healing power.
  3. Use preventative medicine intelligently: know your risks of age-related disease, get appropriate diagnostic and screening tests and immunizations, and treat problems (like elevated blood pressure and cholesterol) in their early stages.
  4. Get regular physical activity throughout life.
  5. Get adequate rest and sleep.
  6. Learn and practice methods of stress protection.
  7. Exercise your mind as well as your body.
  8. Maintain social and intellectual connections as you go through life.
  9. Be flexible in mind and body: learn to adapt to losses and let go of behaviors no longer appropriate for your age.
  10. Think about and try to discover for yourself the benefits of aging.
  11. Do not deny the reality of aging or put energy into trying to stop it. Use the experience of aging as a stimulus for spiritual awakening and growth.
  12. Keep an ongoing record of the lessons you learn, the wisdom you gain, and the values you hold. At critical points in your life, read this over, add to it, revise it, and share it with people you care about.

I know I have some room for improvement as I read his recommendations. Unfortunately, even with the best of efforts, as we age, we will come to know limitations to our health and abilities, and those limitations likely will grow with time. In her book, The Gift of Years: Growing Older Gracefully, Joan Chittister writes:

“Limitations—those physical boundaries that the old reach before the rest of the world—are only that, elders show us. They are boundaries, not barriers. They limit us—they take time and energy, yes—but they do not stop us unless we decide to be stopped. In fact, limitations in one area simply make us develop in another. If your legs are weak, then getting in and out of a wheelchair will only make your arms stronger. If your hearing is impaired, you will begin to write more letters. Limitations, at any age and every age, call out something in us that we never considered before.”

“They also alert us to the needs of others. It takes limitations to be sensitive to their needs.”

” Being limited gives us an opportunity to learn both humility and patience. We aren’t as arrogant anymore as we used to be. But we’re more tenacious than ever.”

“Limitations invite others to get involved as well. We create community out of the needs of the others and the gifts we can bring to them while they, in turn, enrich us.”

“When we define ourselves only by our limitations, we fail to see to what greater things those limitations are calling us for.”

“A blessing of these years is that we know at last what really matters, and the world is waiting to hear it, if only we will make the effort and don’t give in to our limitations.“

More excerpts from Chittister about not giving in to our limitations:

“Generativity—the act of giving ourselves to the needs of the rest of the world—is the single most important function of old age. For example, in [a Harvard study] it was widening their social circle as life went on that was the key factor in the achievement of successful aging, not money, not education, not family.”

“But this ‘widening’ was not simply the creation of social contacts, as important as that is. Instead, these individuals created social contacts by doing more than that—they became actively involved in one or more of the great social activities of life, ‘helping someone else.‘”

“Most important of all, perhaps, is that old age is the only age when we can possibly be so important to the world at large because it is the first time in life when we ourselves are free enough to give much thought to a world broader than our own. We are ready now to stretch ourselves beyond ourselves for the sake of all the others to whom we are leaving this world.”

“A blessing of these years is the freedom to reach out to others, to do everything we can with everything in life that we have managed to develop all these years in both soul and mind for the sake of the rest of the human race.”

We owe it to the world to live our lives trying to be as healthy as we can, in order to help others around us and the generations to come.

Blessings on your remaining weeks of Lent!

Betty Arrigotti

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categories Aging with Grace | | datetime March 24, 2023 11:13 am | comments Comments Off on Aging with Health and Limitations

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