No matter what the question, if the answer is a number, my dad will say, “forty-four.”
It started when he was about to turn forty-five. He’d aged enough, and didn’t see any point in getting older. Forty-four was old enough. As long as he could stay forty-four, he would still be young enough to . . . whatever.
Don’t tell my dad, but he’s added forty years to that number. You’d never know it. He still works twelve hour days, just not five in a row. He still thinks young and looks terrific for his age, even if he’s not working forty-four hours a week any longer.
Days like today I wonder how he does it ~ days when I wake up feeling one hundred. Seriously? It gets worse? I don’t even want to think about it.
So, instead, I choose to think about this:
~ “Hast thou not known? hast thou not heard, that the everlasting God, the Lord, the Creator of the ends of the earth, fainteth not, neither is weary? there is no searching of his understanding. He giveth power to the faint; and to them that have no might he increaseth strength. Even the youths shall faint and be weary, and the young men shall utterly fall: But they that wait upon the Lord shall renew their strength; they shall mount up with wings as eagles; they shall run, and not be weary; and they shall walk, and not faint.” ~ Isaiah 40:28-31 KJV
So, like Dad, I get out of bed every morning, and have a talk with my heavenly Dad. It might take a while of waiting on the Lord, but soon I’m feeling forty-four again.
Waiting and Patience ~ as much as I don’t like those words, they keep coming up again and again. I have to keep forgiving myself and forgiving others and learn all over again that no matter how many times we fail, He never does. His strength is made perfect in our weakness. I’m slowly learning to enjoy these times of weakness, just to see what God will do above and beyond my best efforts.