I never liked “old” people. I found most of them wrinkly, gross and scary. I still do, except now I am one of them.
I liked working with preschoolers. They were small, cute, excited about everything and just loved you. But I always dreaded when we had to take our class of tots to interact with the senior day care attendees. The older adults behaved just like the preschoolers.
But when I had turned 65, I started feeling like I was officially “old”, on the younger side of the oldsters, but still, OLD. There is only one direction I am going in now and there’s no turning back. Quite frankly, it’s scary.
I have friends in their 70’s! And some have reached 80! This is a new world for me. I can’t say I like it. I do, however, like the wisdom I have gained and not caring about what others think.
Buying dishes, of all things, is what brought all this flooding to my mind. I have been wanting new dishes for yearzzz. Our old ones were chipped and well-worn by a family of 6. It was beyond time.
I had never really found any dishes I liked enough to buy, until now. And the price was great. And I had a gift card. I bought them. I was thrilled.
The minute I got home I started cleaning out my cabinets to make space for the new dishes. Then I realized they are larger and heavier. They don’t fit in the cabinet as well. I’m not even going to be able to put all of them in the same cabinet! I had to come up with another place to stash the rest. No easy task. This was a bigger project of rearranging the household than I had counted on. I was exhausted.
My joy started to turn into annoyance. What had I done? I should have just left things as they were. After all, it worked. Should I return them after years of hunting?
I felt like my entire life was turned upside down—changed—by something as silly as dishes. New dishes I had been longing for. How am I going to deal with this and actually enjoy them?
They are simple, white, and shiny without any pattern. Food looks more appetizing on white, doesn’t it? (It does.) I have to tilt the large ones sideways to get them into our too-small microwave. When the kids come to visit, they will probably wreck them.
After using these white ceramic discs that have traumatized my life for a few weeks now, I am getting a little more used to them. They no longer make me want to cry. Besides, I threw out the boxes so they can’t be returned.
I have to learn to live with the change.
I hope this isn’t a foreshadowing of a lot more changes I will have to learn to live with as I age! But alas, I’m afraid it is. Things that will be more challenging than fitting dishes into a cabinet! Life is full of change.
The only way to make sense out of change is to plunge into it, move with it, and join the dance.
~Alan Watts
Who thought dishes could be so stressful? That is the problem with “stuff”. Material things take our eyes off God.
Let us fix our eyes on Jesus, the author and perfecter of our faith (Hebrews 12:2)
These crazy dishes are teaching me a spiritual lesson. Keep your eyes fixed on Jesus. We are running the race, we don’t take extra baggage with us to weigh us down. The material things we accumulate on this earth aren’t important but who we fix our eyes on is.
I just hope there are no dishes in heaven.
