Getting Old

I am 26, going on 27 and I am well aware that by most people's standards I am not old. However, I am still at a point where I can begin to feel the effects of age, or really the fact that I am leaving the critical time period of an athlete that is the late teens and early twenties. A week ago I went cross-country skiing with my family and some of this was brought home to me. I simply do not have the same level of fitness I had four or five years ago. Some of this is a factor of a job that involves lots of sitting and lots of potlucks. Some of it is a factor of the fact that try as I might I am not good at exercising regularly, and some of it is just the reality that I have not skied in years. While my skiing experience brought to mind my current lack of conditioning, the more telling point for me was about two months ago when I fenced for the first time in probably 18 months. In case my readers are wondering, I am referring to the Olympic sport of fencing, not the act of putting up fences, nor the selling of illegal goods on the black market. I fenced actively all through college and even during seminary. In the midst of this there are several times that I engaged in highly intense and fatiguing fencing tournaments, fencing while sick, fencing on little to no sleep, etc. That being said, when I fenced again after so long a break in November, I had a unique experience for me, I was actually unable to do what I wanted to do. Fencing usually has a great adrenaline producing effect for me, allowing me to overcome many of the physical hardships I listed above, however on this occasion, as willing and fired up as my spirit was, my body was simply not able to do all the things I wanted it to do. As with the cross-country skiing last week, when I needed the body to perform it sent back a reply of "no." Which leads me back to my statement of me getting old, which is where I think this post gets interesting.

Getting old in fencing is not actually a bad thing, in general, while younger fencers tend to be more athletic, energetic, and otherwise "good", older fencers, especially the good ones, have something going for them that most younger fencers are severely deficient in, wisdom. When I fence someone younger than me, I often find they tend to really heavily on the knowledge that they can do whatever they need to to win. Older fencers are far more dangerous, because they know they cannot do whatever needed to win. Older fencers know their limits, which makes them harder to fence. One of the things I am realizing as I get more and more involved in my ministry is that the sooner I know my limits, the better off I will be. Now I know there is a danger in overstating one's limits, so that a person, or a congregation, does not think they can do anything, but at the same time, I think there is great value in knowing what it is we can do well, and knowing what is we need to ask for help on, whether that is asking God, or our neighbor, or just knowing that this is something we should not do.

I am getting old, I just hope I can gain some of the wisdom needed to survive along the way.