Posted on 06/09/2024 4:09:56 PM PDT by Jim Robinson
I don't remember when I got old, it just happened. One day I turned around and discovered I was an old man. Thinking back on it I think it was after my wife died. When Sheila died it took all the wind out of my sails. I'm now adrift, without rudder, without anchor and without a North Star. The bilge water is creeping up and threatening to put the fires out for good.
If you've ever experienced being dead in the water in the middle of an ocean, that's how I'm feeling right now. It's a surreal feeling.
'O God, thy sea is so great and my boat is so small.'
I’m sorry I made this thread sound so depressing. I actually Intended it to be Humorous. was poking fun at myself for getting old and decrepit. Having this computer open next to my bad is actually kind of dangerous.
Yes, to varying degrees and ways age slows us down, though for you that is very pronounced, and the loss of a wife must be like losing an appendage itself.
Yet, thru repentant faith and surrender to the risen Lord Jesus, who saves such on His account, we can not only have eternal life with Him, but every day can be a mission from God, as we seek to use everything from our brain to our feet in His service.
I (now 72) often pray to God to bring people to me today that I can show His love and Truth to, and make a positive difference in their lives for time and for eternity. Which God will do if we are trying to live right for Him, and make ourselves avail-able. Thanks and glory be to God. And thanks for providing FR to be used in God’s purpose.
You and I are about a year apart in our age. I would think myself as old but I have a grandmother who just celebrated her 99th. She has a huge number of family who simply adore her. She is blessed. Consider yourself blessed with the huge numbers of “family members” who adore you and call themeselves “FReepers.” Your legacy is one of an American patriot in the same rank as John Adams. Because of you, there many who would say as, pen name “Humphrey Ploughjogger” would say,
“Man has certainly an exalted soul; and the same principle in human nature, — that aspiring, noble principle founded in benevolence, and cherished by knowledge; I mean the love of power, which has been so often the cause of slavery, — has, whenever freedom has existed, been the cause of freedom. If it is this principle that has always prompted the princes and nobles of the earth, by every species of fraud and violence to shake off all the limitations of their power, it is the same that has always stimulated the common people to aspire at independency, and to endeavor at confining the power of the great within the limits of equity and reason.”
Ditto!
Well, it was a needed post to many it appears including me. Praying for you Jim...
I tell my teenage sons, “All you have to do is keep waking up every day, and then, Bam. You’re 30. And then, Bam, you’re 50. It will happen to you, too. Use these years wisely. You will never have as much freedom and potential again as you do right this minute.”
Ticking away the moments that make up a dull day
You fritter and waste the hours in an off-hand way
Kicking around on a piece of ground in your home town
Waiting for someone or something to show you the way
Tired of lying in the sunshine, staying home to watch the rain
And you are young and life is long, and there is time to kill today
And then one day you find ten years have got behind you
No one told you when to run, you missed the starting gun
And you run and you run to catch up with the sun but it’s sinking
Racing around to come up behind you again
Sun is the same, in a relative way, but you’re older
Shorter of breath and one day closer to death
Every year is getting shorter, never seem to find the time
Plans that either come to naught, or half a page of scribbled lines
Hanging on in quiet desperation is the English way
The time is gone, the song is over, thought I’d something more to say
Home, home again
I like to be here when I can
When I come home cold and tired
It’s good to warm my bones beside the fire
Far away across the field
The tolling of the iron bell
Calls the faithful to their knees
To hear the softly spoken magic spells
Keep up with your routine, it’s important not to let the old man in. Like Clint Eastwood says.
As Churchill said, “When you are goin through hell, keep going.”
I can sympathize. It’s been a little over six years since my wife passed away, after failed open-heart surgery. Looking at before-and-after pictures of me, you’d think they were 10 years apart instead of a few months.
Do you know how many people you have helped, in ways you cannot know, by posting your innermost thoughts and feelings?
Ours is a human condition, and we can only gain by relating to one another in meaningful ways.
Thanks for this thread. It has made a difference in my life.
Prince of Space and Jim, I lost my 34 year old son this April to a house fire in the night, a shock I am dealing with. I was not prepared for how grief wears on a person. The other deaths in my experience have been sad, but from age for the most part. The suddenness and horror of this death and the difficulty as a whole of his life leave me with many questions. And I completely understand the feeling of losing the will to live. Living is an issue of will, of fight, living takes energy and motivation that is hard to muster when you just want to see the person and be with them in their restored happy state of living with God in spirit form.
But I do have continuing duties here on Satan’s planet—I have a grandchild that needs a grandmother as good as the grandmothers I had as a kid. I have a husband (not my child’s dad) who is as sweet and good a man as God created who has been to hell and back and deserves a life with love in it. And God has given me the gift of excellent health.
I have two adult children who are young and starting their adult lives without their oldest brother who died in the fire......they maybe need me to be the family rock as I have always been.
“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.” Jeremiah 29:11. The LORD, God Almighty, loves you, Jim, and so do many, many, many of us on Free Republic. You are still here. God still has plans for y, to give you a future and a hope. Place your trust in Jesus, your hope in the LORD, and your fingers on the keyboard. God bless you.
It is Clint that has taught us.........”Don’t let the old man in”
I don’t feel old yet. My body has gotten old, but my brain is ignoring the message.
You are not alone. None of us are.
There it is......... wisdom. It just bubbles up.
On May 1, I turned 82. On June 1, my wife and I celebrated our 60th wedding anniversary.
At 11:30 or so this morning I will take my van about 200 miles to visit a site my client assigned me to visit. I go on such visits one or two days a week.
Last Friday, I attendred the First Friday Lunch gathering of
my High School class og 1960. There were 15 there. Two have had strokes, one was hospitaqlized for several months and the rest have all sorts of malades. But some of us are in pretty good condition still and carry on very active lives.
My motto has become “Don’t let the old man in” My models are Clint East Wood who made a movie at 90 something and Warren Buffet who keeps a hand in at 90+
Because you just don’t know. While alive, live
Jim, God bless you and Sheila!
I relate so well to your comment. I lost my wife of 55 years about two years ago. Words can't explain the emptiness. I've never felt this way in my entire 80 years on this planet.
I won't try to describe the emotions from that loss -- but there are many. So many.
Her spirit is with me, and I know we will be reunited. I'm not suicidal, but I look forward to that day. If it were not for two wonderful children and grandchildren and my God, I'm not sure how I would make it in this world we call Earth. They keep me going until I rejoin my wife.
Getting old is easy. Getting over that loss is horrible and devastating.
Again, may God continue to bless us both until we join Him and our spouses once again in eternity.
I hear ya! Raising your own animals takes a lot of effort. We raise a steer for beef each season, and also have a mule and now chickens.
We raise/train hunting dogs for fun and little profit. When Beau buys dog food it’s by the PALLET and he moves it with the skid steer.
I will NOT be continuing on in THAT tradition if he goes before I do. ;)
I tell people I remember being young - I just don’t remember what it Felt like to be young.
Getting old ain’t for sissies.
God Bless
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