Age.

(This post was written for Five Minute Friday over at The Gypsy Mom with the inspiration word "older")

When I think of getting older, I think 'aging'.  The word makes it sound more graceful, more welcome.  Age is inevitable.  It is one of the true God-ordained constants.  I age, my husband ages, my children age, the earth ages - everything grows older, everything dies.  It just is.

The Pop-culture world would have us believe age is ugly, unatractive, something to be avoided at all costs.  We shop for new faces, hair colors, and identities.  We replace all things old with shiny new ones.  We place less and less value on the ancient, the wise, the weathered.  Wrinkles are imperfections.  Years behind us mean nothing if not accompanied by a lingering desirability far beyond our natural timeline.

We desperately strive to look younger and younger, flawlessness marketed as attainable.  Botox treatments, plastic surgery, age-defying creams and lasers, the beauty industry... all more popular now than they've ever been.  Billions of dollars are spent on the attempt to defy age.  We're willing to cut open our faces - and stretch our very skin - to simply look younger.  Because to be younger is to be more valuable.  The world has turned.  There's been an unhealthy switch.  The lust for the flawless, ageless face is a deep, dangerous one that goes against the truth that age should be wisdom and highly respected.  

And in this anti-aging quest, do we not discredit our growth?  Our journey?  The coming of us?  When we erase age, in essence, we erase the truth of our past days.

I'm 28.  A baby to many, but "OH, my goodness, ALMOST 30!!!" to me.  Well, I've changed my mind.  I won't fear aging.  I say, bring it on.  Every laugh line on my face is a sign of the deep joy I've soaked up in this life.  The days of sunshine bliss and belly laughs.  The days of seeing first steps and hearing first words.  The days of warm fires and hallow woods.

Stretch marks from babies grown in my womb are love scars woven deeply into my physical skin but deeper still into the frabric of who I am.  Those scars changed everything.  Those scars saved me.  I would never will them gone.

Every frown line, every single one, reminds me of the struggles I've faught through.  The tears cried; broken heart aching over hard times or loved ones lost.  Over things I cannot change and things I had to change about myself.  The stress and the hard days when I could do nothing else but call desperately to God for help.  For a life line.  And the creases on my face - reminders He is always there.  Though life remains imperfect, He remains Truth and always present.  Always.  Through the lines, the scars, the births, and the growth. 

Grandma with our first baby...

My Grandpa with two of our children - 88 years old, how I love and cherish him.

In my life, I'm embracing age.  Not rejecting it.  Not trying to reverse it or resist it.  I want to cherish age - respect those who've walked this earth longer than I - and teaching our children to do the same.  Loving age in myself and accepting aging as a God-ordained progression through this crazy ride called life.  Knowing, hoping, praying, I'm heading towards something even more amazing than what I've been gifted with here.