"Ancora Imparo"

(I am still learning)
~Michelangelo at age 87

This week we celebrate my mother’s 85th birthday. It is hard to relate to what it is like to be a certain age until you arrive there yourself and I try to be respectful of that. But I do know that going on the example of my mother, she lives out the maxim, “Life, at any age, is to be celebrated.”

I asked her to share with me 5 things she’s learned from years 80-85 because I perceive that she has grown a great deal in these past 5 years. Best of all, she stated in what she wrote to me that she didn’t just learn them, she’s trying to be better at actually living them out:

- Trust in the Lord to give you wisdom.
- Never surrender without considering the alternative.
- Believe in God and yourself.
- The importance of prayer, the Bible and church.
- Friends are the flowers of the soul – keep cultivating them.

Does it surprise you that she would write things that she has probably been living out her whole life long? It did me, at first, but then I realized that each age brings new challenges that revise our original thoughts and approaches, shedding light on new angles of living and what it means to be alive in our faith. It is exactly this willingness to continue learning, and be engaged in life and its daily adventures, that makes her an inspiration.

About a month ago, I was in a bookstore with her when she purchased Eckhart Tolle’s book, “A New Earth: Awakening to Your Life’s Purpose.” That made me grin. I have not read it, but was intrigued that she would buy it, just going on the title alone. (She hasn’t given me her completed review of it yet so I can’t tell you what she thinks of it).

I hope I don’t ever fall into the trap of thinking I have it all figured out. That would be so boring…so limiting. Life is an adventure. Faith is an adventure.

You are living out your faith when you are 87, or 85, and you say, “I’m still learning.”

Here is a test to find out whether your mission in life is complete. If you're alive, it isn't.

~Richard Bach

What a large volume of adventures may be grasped within this little span of life by him who interests his heart in everything.
~Laurence Sterne