Will you live to be 100?

After my last birthday and even before that, I’ve been having some thoughts on the aging process. One thought is, “As you think, so you are.” Attempt to spend time with positive people and always have fun in spite of your aches and pains. After 80 how many positive people do you know?

Some of us have lost our closest friends and we need some under-80 people to come alongside and help make up for what we have lost. I’ve heard that strong social support lowers hypertension, heart disease, along with depression and can even lower mortality rates. Being realistic and optimistic, especially as you age, means that you can find ways to live with changes in your life and that means for as long and as well as you can. However, before we get so entangled with life, let’s not forget to just look at the things in our lives as temporary pleasures, things for which to be grateful, but things that we can easily leave behind. The Bible says we are aliens in a land not our own, sojourners passing through.

We should take every opportunity to enhance our spiritual lives, spend more time in God’s Word. Recognize things you can do for your church, even if it’s just your attendance there.

Live with the realities of the present, anticipate the future with hope, remember past blessings and let go of past disappointments.

Accept your aging whether it is 35, 65, or 85.

Someone has said, “If you deny aging, you’re afraid of it.”

Keep in contact with others, resist the urge to withdraw from life. Maintain as much independence as possible, without withdrawing.

Sometimes God uses some of our entanglements on this earth to gently teach us that things here are only temporary.

Signed,
Trudy Fann
(Gertrude Bradley Fann)
Member of Eastern Band of Cherokee Indians

Source: The Cherokee One Feather, August 26, 2009 — http://www.nc-cherokee.com/theonefeather/files/2011/03/8-26-2009.pdf