Thursday, November 3, 2016

A Second Adulthood




We are all on a journey of aging. We can do all the cosmetic work we want on our bodies. We can eat right, sleep right, and exercise right. We can have the right ancestors and the right genes. Still we get older and things begin to fall apart or slow down or quit. This can be the beginning of the end or a warning we have a limited time to start again. Starting again is an option we need to consider more often.

Too often we see someone slipping into the later years and acting in such a way that reminds us of a child. What do we say or at least think? They are moving into their second childhood. Childish ways to some extent are replacing the more logical actions of a healthy adult. Unfortunately we also associate a second childhood as one of the steps we take as we move toward the end of life itself. That makes it all the more depressing.

What would happen if we focused more upon reshaping those later years before they can turn into a second childhood? What if we took the steps we could to enter again a second adulthood? Instead of seeing that next step as leading unavoidably down the slippery slope to a sense of uselessness, we took a detour around the hill to a point where we could start climbing again. It would not be our age we would be starting again. It would be our dreams and the actions we could take to make those dreams come true.

When Dr. Robert Dale wrote his book, “To Dream Again”, he was addressing the need for churches to look at their place on a life cycle bell curve. Infancy would be at the starting point on the left hand side. The curve would rise through childhood, youth, early adulthood, stable adulthood, declining adulthood, and then down the slope to old age and ultimately death.

Dale proposed the flow of the life of a church did not have to follow such a neat curve. A church could make the intentional decision to detour off the top of the curve, go back to an earlier point, and dream again. I believe a person should be able to do the same thing.

When retirement comes, all too often a person sees the descending slope ahead of them as the inevitable path to death. Death will someday come, of course, but a person can put a few bumps and curves in that slope by daring to dream again.

No, you cannot go back and regain the energy of youth, at least not yet. A person can, however, use the wisdom gained through the extra years of life and apply it to dreams left unfulfilled. A person can dare to dream again, seek out the resources that will allow those dreams to come true, and then apply the rich wisdom and determined passion in bringing those dreams into reality.

What is passed cannot be repeated or undone. That experience can be used to make the time still ahead a period of life when once more dreams are lived out and productivity is realized.

In his own way the Apostle Paul made this vow for his life. He dared to keep dreaming. He said,

Php 3:12-14 “I do not claim that I have already succeeded or have already become perfect. I keep striving to win the prize for which Christ Jesus has already won me to himself. Of course, my friends, I really do not think that I have already won it; the one thing I do, however, is to forget what is behind me and do my best to reach what is ahead. So I run straight toward the goal in order to win the prize, which is God's call through Christ Jesus to the life above.