Older Women

Wow is all I can say. I have recently had the opportunity to spend three days with some amazing women. They happen to be sisters one is 86 and the other is 89. There are several reasons why I found them amazing but the most powerful reason is that they survived. Neither one of them have had easy lives. There are several things in their lives that hope I never have to live through, but it has made them who they are today.

I heard some of their stories several times during those three days and I wanted to say, you told me that already, but I didn’t. I realized it must have been very important to them if they kept telling me about it and tried to see what they were trying to tell me.

We were there to help one of them go through some things and move items around in the house to make it easier for her to get around after a fall that has put her in a walker. As we were going through piles of papers and magazines, I saw her getting more and more agitated. Then she blurted out “stop trying to take away my life”. It struck me what was happening. We were holding her life in our hands and asking her to throw it away.

She had lived in this same home for 61 years, and every piece of paper reminded her of a good time or a not so good time in her life. Each time she looked at a book, a magazine with a page turned down she relived that moment in her life again. She was an avid crafter and seamstress, most of those things she enjoyed she is no longer going to be able to participate in again. Tubs of material and yarn that she won’t be able to use, but hopes that she will someday be productive again.

Titus 2 New King James Version (NKJV)

2 But as for you, speak the things which are proper for sound doctrine: ² that the older men be sober, reverent, temperate, sound in faith, in love, in patience; ³ the older women likewise, that they be reverent in behavior, not slanderers, not given to much wine, teachers of good things— ⁴ that they admonish the young women to love their husbands, to love their children, ⁵ to be discreet, chaste, homemakers, good, obedient to their own husbands, that the word of God may not be blasphemed.

          The Bible teaches us how to be older women and how to teach the younger women. If the Bible is telling us to teach younger women, doesn’t that indicate that the younger women should be listening to the older women? I consider myself an older woman; however, there are women who are older than me that I can learn life lessons from, and younger women that I teach.

        I learned this weekend some very important lessons:

•   We all have a story.
•   Don’t be full of yourself.
•   Don’t be ashamed of where you are life it is a journey.
•   Smile, laugh and speak kindly.
•   Always help someone else as much as you can.

Try and remember that whatever situation you are in, you can learn something from someone else.

Be kind everyone, someone you meet is hurting.