The glory of young men is their strength, but the splendor of old men is their gray hair.
– Proverbs 20:29
Dear Sisters and Brothers,
As my family has been preparing for our reunion vacation next week on the sand dunes of Lake Michigan,
my brother Brock (a Johns Hopkins Fellow in Geriatric Medicine) sent everyone some recommended Covid
precautions for us all to follow as we gather from various areas across the country. As he put it, “We want
to keep the young kids safe that haven’t been vaccinated, as well as protect Mom and Beth, Jim, and
Layne.”
My sister Beth and her husband Jim and I had been grouped together with Mom as part of “the old ones”
needing extra care, along with the youngest in our family. (Brock has, on several occasions, taken pains to
point out to me that men over 60 are statistically as at-risk as a healthy 87-year-old woman.) Wow! There
it was, in print and on the record for all of my siblings to see; “Layne is now one of the old ones.”
This amused me as much as it pinched me in any way; Brock is only four years behind me, after all. After a
bit of time, it actually has added to my growing excitement and anticipation for the gathering. There are
now two generations in our family younger than mine. Our babies have had babies. There will be more of
us at this reunion than ever before. We old ones will have much to look forward to!
As one of the old ones it will be my duty to take lots of pictures, ask lots of questions about new jobs, new
college classes, pony-league baseball and soccer teams, favorite music groups and movies . . . and laugh
and play with the very youngest in the shallow waters at the lake’s edge. It will be my job to tell embarrassing stories to the youngest ones about when their parents were the young ones, to tell embarrassing stories to my nephew’s new wife and to the four new girlfriends (of my son and 3 of his cousins) who will be sizing our family up, and to tell stories reminding us all about Grandpa and how much he is enjoying
watching us all from heaven. I will also take extra time to appreciate and soak up Mom’s love for us all; increasingly grateful for every one of these gatherings that she still shares with us.
It’s time for our generation to spend most of our time and energy on this vacation making sure that everyone else has a good time. (Don’t get me wrong; I intend to have LOTS of fun myself!) When the very youngest find themselves becoming the very oldest, I hope that they can remember us and this time we will spend together at the lake; just as I remember my great-grandparents, grandparents, great uncles and aunts, and other far-flung family gathering together many summers ago.
As we prayerfully hope and plan and anticipate the growth of our Central Christian Church family, some of us will realize that we are now the old ones, and that realization should be one of great comfort and joy. We are not being replaced and we are not being relegated to the side; we are the generation whose job it is to welcome in the young ones and the new ones. We will be remember-ers of our past and the tellers of our
stories. We will be the ones who ask questions about the exciting new things, and sharers of our own experiences. We will remind each other of who we have been and we will marvel at who we are becoming with each successive new family member that arrives.
Let’s start planting some seeds of excitement at the prospect of meeting new family members and welcoming them to the (picnic) table!
Peace,
Pastor Layne