If white hair were a sign of wisdom, I’d be well on my way. But age—or white hair—doesn’t guarantee wisdom any more than youth precludes it.

Still, we long for each new year to bring us to deeper faith, peace and wisdom. We long to become freer to answer God’s call, even as we become more constrained by time and our bodies and the needs of others.

This summer, I turned 40, which is, of course, the natural thing to do after making one’s way through one’s 30s. I celebrated accomplishments and grieved losses along the way, like everyone else. Yet the anticipation of this new decade pained me.

My own aging—if I can call it that already—has meant acknowledging both what is and what is not or not-yet. The decade marks have brought life into sharper focus for me: What exactly does God want me to do next? How is God calling me to grow in this coming stretch of time?

In Journey Inward, Journey Outward, Elizabeth O’Connor writes about Christian self-discovery and service: “Each of our years is to be richer than the one before, so that the end of life finds us living in a vastly expanded Umwelt, seeing a world we could not have imagined in youth. Flexibility and openness to life should be the hard-won marks of the old. Instead, the opposite is more often true.”

Perhaps the opposite is more often true for the fear and anxiety we feel as yet another year passes and questions linger about God’s call in our lives. As we age, we might ask with the Psalmist, “Why are you cast down, O my soul, and why are you disquieted within me?” (Psalm 42:5a).

We might make excuses to avoid seeking wisdom’s way forward: “If only I were happier in my marriage.” “If only I made more money.” Or, “If only I were smarter.”
We long for signs that indicate we’re on the right path, headed somewhere other than death. We might feel paralyzed by our circumstances or by our fears about the future.

We are like the disciples on the high mountain when Jesus’ face “shone like the sun, and his clothes became dazzling white” (Matthew 17:2). We are overcome by fear at God’s power to illuminate and bless. As in the story of Jesus’ transfiguration, he comes and touches us, saying, “Get up and do not be afraid.”

So at age 29 and again at 39, I listened for Jesus’ reassuring voice. I chose birthday mentors to visit with me monthly, leading up to my birthday. In our conversations, I reflected back on the previous years and prepared for the coming ones. I benefited from the flexibility and openness to life already cultivated by these two older women.

I also planned a 30th and then a 40th birthday bash for my friends and family to give thanks with me for my life—for all life—however it unfolds. This past summer, my uncle Al smoked a hog, my mom painted my house, my cousins sent flowers, my friends and relatives traveled from near and far to illuminate and bless me with their presence—and with God’s assurance that I need not fear whatever comes next.

All the planning and praying and fretting sometimes seemed like a lot of fuss to make over something that happens to everyone lucky enough to grow older. For me, though, marking a new decade so carefully was my way to try to “see a world I could not have imagined in my youth” and to share that vision with others.

Benedictine Sister Joan Chittister writes, “Old age enlightens—not simply ourselves, as important as that may be, but those around us as well. Our task is to realize that.”*
At 40 I can hardly say I’ve reached “old age.” But when I get there I want to be able to testify that “each of my years has been richer than the one before.” With God’s grace and the wisdom of my elders to show me the way, I trust it will be so.

Sara Dick is associate pastor at Shalom Mennonite Church in Newton, Kan.

*from The Gift of Years: Growing Older Gracefully