THE AGE OF MIRACLES

This summer, I read a book called the AGE OF MIRACLES. Its subtitle is Embracing The New Midlife. I don't think of myself as someone in their midlife, but well...I guess that I am. I just don't always act like it. Anyway, I thought this book looked interesting and it was. Although I didn't appreciate everything this author had to say, I did glean some very positive thoughts about growing older and embracing midlife. Here are a few quotes...

"Age involves a lot of letting go--some of our physical prowess, perhaps, or certain worldly opportunities, or our children to live their own lives. Yet such letting go isn't meant to constitute a depressing sacrifice of happiness. Anytime we're called to let go of something, there's a hidden treasure to be found in the experience. No birthing of anything new can occur without a dying of the old.

You're carefree before becoming a parent, in a way you will never be again. But you're satisfied, having become one, in a way you never could have been before. And that's where our generation is now. We're no longer carefree. But we're something else instead. We are grown-ups in the deepest sense, and that is new psychological territory..."

"The only way I can know what I should be doing is if I focus on who I should be. That doesn't mean there aren't magnificent things we're supposed to do, but God can only work for us to the extent that He can work through us. Putting our focus on being who He would have us be is the only sure way we'll ever come close to doing what He would have us do."

"Aging humbles us, it's true--but it also awakens us to how precious life is, and how very fragile."

I think that this last quote is very true for me. I am much more appreciative of things and people at this point in my life than when I was young(er?). It is a good thing and something I plan on enjoying as I get even older!