I’m doing a Bible study on Wednesday mornings. It begins at
6:30am and this requires me to miss my morning walk with Chris and Amos. We
walk at 5:30am mainly because it works best for Chris—for one if we wait until
evening I won’t want to get out after dinner, I pretty much hunker down for the
night once my belly is full and the kitchen is clean—another reason is that
Chris is not a morning person or does he like to walk for exercise purposes, so
I have to get him out before he is actually awake. So anyway, this morning I
decided after bible study to stop at the Maple Woods trail and get my walk
in—now normally I would go and get Amos for the walk too but today I decided to
leave him be—don’t tell him, he would be angry.
As I was walking I got to thinking about the things I truly
love about my life and being me.
The first thing I thought about is I love walking—I hate
running and I don’t understand those who love it or do it, rarely do they look
happy about it. Now there are days when I don’t love walking but that is
usually weather related—too hot, too cold, too icy/snowy, too achy, too
whatever. But most days I love getting
out and being outside. I can’t listen to music or anything in my ears while I’m
walking—for some reason this literally drives me crazy, having the sound that
close in my head is too distracting for me. I love hearing the sounds around
me, especially on this particular trail, there is the sound of the bugs and the
birds, the trees and creek, you know, the natural sounds. But then there are
the sounds of the construction workers the sound of people working hard for a
living, in the heat of the day to build a house for a family. There are the
sounds of the other folks walking or running or biking along the same trail.
There are the sounds of the moms who are demonstrating a healthy lifestyle to
their children by bring them along with little bikes or wagons. All of these
sounds are wonderful to me at this time, now at another time of the day all
these same sounds might be completely overwhelming to me because there are
times when I need to have quiet and be completely alone, but when I am on this trail I love hearing all of these sounds
The next thing I thought about was: I love coffee, A LOT. I
have a cup or two every morning—and sometimes in the afternoon. I love hot
coffee with half and half, I love iced coffee with whole milk, I love hot and
cold mochas at any of the numerous small, independent coffee houses in KC (or
any town for that matter). We will search out little coffee places when we travel. I love weekend coffee dates with Chris or the
spontaneous call from Sam to meet them for coffee. Coffee is good and I would
like to thank Luke and Sam for raising my standards on the quality of my
coffee. As I’m writing I am sitting outside in the City Market at Quay Coffee,
with Amos by my side, enjoying an iced mocha—I LOVE COFFEE!!!
Number 3 on this list—and these are in no way ordered, only
how I thought about them this morning—I love wine, not so much that it is a
problem—wine, like coffee, is something to enjoy socially as well as at home in
the evening with Chris and/or friends. Good wine is subjective, what I enjoy
you may hate and vice versa. We have a few wines that we really like so that’s
what we drink. We love going to wineries and trying new wines. Missouri has
some great wineries and we have visited several of them. One of our most favorite wines is a
California wine from the Livermore Valley name of Wente—Chris found them more
than 25 years ago on a business trip to the area and we can get their wines at
our local grocery store—I did request it and they obliged me by getting in
stock—I feel that I have to go in a purchase it occasionally so they will keep
carrying it. I love sitting outside on a
comfortable summer evening with Chris and enjoying a glass of wine. I love getting together with friends and talking and laughing over a glass of wine.
I love being in the sun, I love how I feel with a little color
in my skin and I know I shouldn’t spend as much time as I do in the sun, but
believe me it isn’t as much time as it used to be. I wear a hat sometimes too,
which is a big deal because I love having the sun on my skin. I love going to the pool or sitting on the deck
with a book and being out in the sun.
I love the chores I have around our home. I love cleaning my
house, I especially love having a clean house, I love the satisfaction of how
tired I am after cleaning the house, a job well done is something to be happy
about. I love mowing the yard, I love how the yard looks with the freshly mown
lines and I love how it smells as I am mowing, now this used to be something I
hated because my allergies were out of control but that isn’t the case anymore.
I love how I feel after mowing, again it’s a good tired and I can see the
fruits of my labor. I mow because Chris
works really hard all day and takes care of his family, he shouldn’t have to
come home and mow or spend time on Saturday doing it. He also doesn’t care
about the yard as much as I do so I mow. He does all the other stuff, like the
remodeling things—I don’t love that—I love the finished product and I love
coming up with the ideas but the actual work is not my cup of tea. Another
chore I love is ironing—weird I know, but I love ironing, I love how everything
looks all fresh and clean and crisp. I love turning a movie on to keep me on
track through this chore. I love how Chris looks when he leaves for work in his
ironed clothes. I always tell him that how he looks is a direct reflection on
me.
So you may be wondering at this point how the
title of this came about when it has nothing to do with the things l thought
about on my walk this morning. The conclusion I came to this morning is that I
love growing older, I love how I feel (most of the time), I am healthier at 53
than I was at 23, I am stronger today than I was a year ago and all of this, I
hope, will keep me from being old as I grow older. I have to be the one to make
the choice to do all the things I love, once I quit I am afraid that I will
start being old. It may hurt sometimes and there may come a day when I
physically cannot do what I do now but I am going to fight like crazy to keep
pushing that day farther and farther off. I truly look forward to
growing older and enjoying the life I have been gifted by God to live. May you
grow older without being old.
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