I will admit that I am a woman who struggles with aging. I have wrestled with heading toward 60 years old. I have resisted allowing my hair to become its (new) natural color, and when I look in the mirror I see a face that is no longer recognizable to me. In fact, I’m often shocked at the woman I see looking back at me in the mirror and I wonder, how did this happen? When did I become “an older woman”?
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Sometimes, it is hard for us as their friends to confront them in their sin and hold them accountable, because their suffering is so raw and unending. Are we doing them a favor when we overlook their sin and make excuses for them? Maybe for a time this might be appropriate, as they each adjust to the difficulty or trial. But if this sin becomes a pattern, as it has with the examples above, then we as their Christian brothers and sisters must help them to repent and change.
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Individuals who suffer from chronic pain must learn to cope with the loss of the life that they’d thought would be. Jane, for instance, will not sail into her retirement years crocheting and sewing for her grandchildren, as she’d thought she would. Needlework and crafting gave her a great deal of pleasure and satisfaction, and in some ways were a part of her identity. Dealing with chronic pain is, in this sense, like a death: The person you thought you were; the person you planned to be, at least in this sense, has died. Counselees with chronic pain or disability often wrestle with the question, “Who am I now? Now that I can’t do the things that I’m most known for doing, who am I, and what purpose do I serve now? “
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The answer is the same for us as it is for true orphans of this world who start life, for whatever reason, without parents: We belong to God. Created in His image, we are His. He determines everything that happens in our lives, and the timing of it.
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It was a magical place full of imagination and memories. On a recent visit, I discovered that my childhood home was gone, replaced by a tangle of roads and buildings. I can’t shake the sadness…these emotions that well up. I was trying to find some link to my past…some proof that we had lived there. That my father had built a good life for us there. That we had been happy and safe. Instead, I found progress…I can’t see it improves things when fields and gardens and climbing trees are wiped out for the sake of an industrial park.
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We are not a licensed counseling agency, nor are we psychologically or medically trained therapists. We offer ‘pastoral’ counseling intended to bring life change through heart change.