By Clairene Herold

Winter Grace: Spirituality and Aging, by Kathleen Fischer, has inspired these thoughts on aging:

Some have scoffed at Robert Browning’s famous words “Grow old along with me! The best is yet to be.” We sail through the seasons of life -- spring, summer, fall -- and then suddenly shake our heads, blink our eyes and say, "So this is winter, and I’m in it. What shall I do with it?" We can’t prevent it, but we can revere it.

Society equates beauty with youth and age with ugliness -- so wrong. If we are blessed with good physical and mental health, we can pursue things we always wanted to do but never had the time. We don’t “quit life,” we just don’t feel driven to be on that fast merry-go-round but choose one in slower motion. We can trust God, love ourselves and love other people.

We cam bring out that large sheet of paper and begin listing the positives and negatives that have come to us during our journey thus far and find the positives have already run off the page before we even begin listing the negative. Our faith in our Lord is a major factor in deciding how we handle the winter when we come to it.