Gaining Perspective

We lie in bed, my husband and I, our backs reveling from the PainStop spray.

We’re injured.

His lower back, my upper left, just under the shoulder blade.

He doesn’t know how he hurt his.

Me,

I lifted our four year old niece at Christmas, I think.

My husband breaks the silence and says,

 “We smell like old people.”

Are we, old?

How old is old, anyway?

Forty? Fifty? Sixty? Seventy?

Thirty?

Isn’t old merely a perspective?

True, I’m not as young as I once was, are any of us?

And true,

 I’ve started feeling the effects of arthritics, my husband, too,

but

I  don’t think of us as being in the same category as  “old people.”

Not yet, anyway.

However,

being older does have its perks.

I mean,

I do take advantage of the senior coffee at McDonalds, because I’ve earned the prerogative to do so.

And

when twenty-somethings call me ma’am, I appreciate their respect.

All in all,

I accept

that I am not as young as I once was,

and

I accept,

hopefully with dignity and with God’s grace,

that I will live long enough, in my mind, to be considered an old person.

With that said, I am

gaining perspective each time I pray Psalm 71: 17-18.

Dear God: