Friends? At 63? That’s not their role
You don’t want to get married have kids better plan better
“Friends? At 63? That’s not their role
You don’t want to get married have kids better plan better”
That’s where all her old friends are...taking care of their families.
I have a neighbor who did marry and have three kids. She’s 76. Husbands died and two out of three kids died. The surviving kid lives in California and has little to do with her. Not everything in life is rosey. Some are alone through no fault of their own. It’s sad.
Oh, but she said she didn’t want “the chains of matrimony.” Says a lot....
With the mobility of today's society, many people who have kids and raised them responsibly find themselves alone after the kids marry someone from a different state whom they met in college, or have a job transfer across the country, or travel for work, etc. So there are a lot of needs such older people have, especially widowed or divorced seniors, for friends who can be counted upon in challenging situations.
Such friendships are often hard to find and require work to maintain. Reliability in friendships for help when you need it also requires you to give help when it's needed, and some people forget that part. Their friendship account becomes “overdrawn”, and a sudden spat can end things unless there is also a strong development of communications and values. The woman in this self-pitying essay says she goes weeks without talking to anyone, and almost boasts about not being a team player or joiner. As a wise man once said, “You can have whatever you want in life, if you are willing to pay the price.”
Fortunate folks find and participate willingly a healthy church community, hopefully large enough to have a “care team” and an ethos of letting the office know if you need a ride to a medical appointment or are in recovery from surgery and could use some frozen meals, etc.
The church I've been part of in recent years has subcommittees for shut-in care, new mother care, respite care for caregivers of disabled relatives, emergency meal delivery and various other needs, in a congregation of roughly 200.
Do a few people shoulder most of the caring? Surprisingly, the elders do a great job of recruiting new members onto all kinds of ministries right from the start, including weeding an assigned “zone” on the property, trimming hedges, laundering table or altar cloths, kitchen help, etc., in ADDITION to numerous evangelical activities. From teenage onward, almost everyone has some role to play. I hope heaven is this well organized.
It isn’t? For one year I drove another church member to her radiation appointments twice a week. She became a friend and I was devastated when she died.
I see other church members drive a pastor to shot appointments that make it impossible for him to drive home. I have had friends show up to help me care for two babies while a family member moved. While she was here she also cleaned out my freezer.
Church friends have brought us meals while one of us was recovering from surgery.
The list goes on.
God’s perfect plan is for everyone to be part of a church family so nobody goes to the er alone.