“Whether we age with grace and poise or become bitter, resentful people is largely determined by our response to disappointment and the habits of response that often result.”

A thought by Jeff Manion (2010-07-14) in his book The Land Between: Finding God in Difficult Transitions (p. 41). Zondervan. Kindle Edition.

What an awesome thought.  We have a choice - grace and poise or bitter and resentful.  

I lived with a man who aged with grace and poise.  There was a lot of disappointment in his life but he didn’t let it change his response to life.  He was my hero.  He was my dad, B. Ivan Williams.  I always said that when I grew up I wanted to be like my dad.

Life is tough. That is so true. There is a phrase that people love to use when they are going through difficult, disappointing times.  When our kids were growing up we tried to never use it.  We even outlawed it in our family.  It was hard sometimes. But for many it is an attitude toward their life.  When you are going through tough times do you ever say, “Life isn’t fair?”  0f course life isn’t fair.  If life was fair the most perfect man who ever lived would never have been put on a cross to die.  But it happened.  There are times of disappointment in our lives that aren't fair but our response toward them determines a lot.

My dad used to tell of a little old man and a little old women who had a cellar and down in that cellar they had a bushel of apples.  Every morning during the winter, the little old man would take a bowl and go downstairs into the cellar and he would look through the apples looking for a rotten apple and then put it in the bowl and take it upstairs.  He then would take a knife and cut away the rotten part of the apple and then they would eat the rest of the apple.  And my dad would then say that that little old man and little old lady ate rotten apples all winter.   That if he would have just thrown the rotten apple away and taken a good apple, they would have eaten good apples all winter.

Life is tough and there are a lot of rotten times, disappointing times in life.  I know there are but i also know there are good times amongst the rotten times.   Yes, it is so easy to feed on the rotten, the disappointments , and never see the good.   My response toward life’s disappointments goes a long way toward my aging with grace and poise or become bitter and resentful.

My dad also had a relationship with that perfect man who died on the cross.  His name was Jesus.  That went a long way in determining his response toward life.


So how are you aging?