Aging in an Instant
In the Book of Ecclesiastes (3:1-8), God tells us that there is a season for everything: a time to be born, a time to die, a time to plant, a time to pluck up what is planted. We are also sometimes reminded—though it was tragically left out—that there is a time to realize you’ve aged about 20 years in a single moment.
There’s no better way to start this tale than with weddings—an event that once filled our weekends with joy, dancing, and a hint of mischief. My wife and I attended many weddings in our day, dressed in our finest, basking in the glow of young love, and feeling pretty spry ourselves. But then, as if some cosmic wedding planner took pity on us, we experienced a warm, dry spell. The wedding invitations stopped coming. It was like we had been granted a reprieve from the mandatory tuxedo-wearing, speech-listening, and chicken-or-fish choosing that had once dominated our social calendar.
But, as seasons do, this one changed. After years of blissful quiet, we were suddenly invited to a wedding. Excitedly, we accepted, dusted off our finest attire, and prepared for what we assumed would be another youthful affair. But as I sat there, looking at the happy couple, something hit me like many wedding favors—this wasn’t the wedding of a friend’s child. No, this was the wedding of the friends themselves. The realization washed over me like a cold sweat: our friends were getting remarried or married for the first time, and we had, somewhere along the way, crossed the Rubicon from “young whippersnapper” to “seasoned veteran.”
It was as if someone had turned a page in the calendar of life, and suddenly, we were in the season of second weddings, third marriages, and blended families. We had aged in an instant, right there in that pew. And from that moment on, it wasn’t just the weddings of our friends’ children we were attending—we were now going to war for our friends themselves, rallying around them in their new marital adventures with a vigor that belied our advancing years.
Get a Real Doctor
But if that wasn’t enough of a wake-up call, the true shock came on an inevitable day, but no less surprising: the first time I went to the hospital as a patient. Now, I’ve been to hospitals before—cheering up sick friends, welcoming new babies, or visiting the occasional grandparent. But this time was different. I was the one on the gurney, and when the doctors arrived, I nearly sat up and demanded to see their IDs. They all looked like they were moonlighting from their high school drama club, dressed up as doctors for a Halloween party.
One doctor in particular caught my eye, and I swear, he couldn’t have been a day over 12. I half expected him to pull out a skateboard and zip down the hallway, perhaps making a pit stop at the vending machine for a bag of gummy worms. “Who’s this Doogie Howser wannabe?” I muttered to myself. “Can someone please send in a real doctor?” But then it hit me like the cold gel of an ultrasound probe: this was the real doctor, and I was now officially older than every single person tasked with keeping me alive. I’d aged yet again, right there on the operating table.
As we journey through the seasons of life, these jarring, often hilarious, sometimes sobering moments—remind us that time is indeed passing, even if we don’t feel it day to day. One minute we’re attending weddings of our friends’ children, the next we’re watching our friends take their second trips down the aisle. One day, we’re the young ones in the room, and the next, we’re wondering if our doctors have a curfew.
But there’s a certain beauty in it all, a rhythm that makes each season of life worth experiencing, even if it does come with a few gray hairs and the occasional existential crisis. For everything, there is a season, and the season we find ourselves in now is one of acceptance, reflection, and, perhaps, a little bit of humor—because if we can’t laugh at how quickly we’ve aged, we might cry instead.
These changing seasons and the passage of time also make your estate planning out of date. If your estate plan is a vehicle, you won’t use the same vehicle to transport yourselves as a newlywed couple as you do when you are carting around the soccer team; you’re driving off into your retirement years.
If you haven’t reviewed your planning in a while, it might be a good time to revisit your decisions, reconsider your relationships, and invest some time in reorienting your priorities.
