“Too Young or Too Old?”

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When George (Jimmy Stewart) asks Mary (Donna Reed) how old she is in “It’s a Wonderful Life,” she replies that she is eighteen. Then she asks, “Too young or too old?” If we bow to the cultural expectations around us, we might spend our entire lives being too young or too old.

On Wednesday night after church, I stopped in at our local Dollar General to pick up a couple of things. I usually browse a bit to see what’s new, perhaps a $1 miniature gnome for my garden or some new window clings for the next holiday.

While I browsed, I overheard a conversation between two young women who were probably in their late teens or early twenties. I’ll call them Girl A and Girl B. Girl A had evidently just suggested a purchase or an idea to Girl B. When I came close enough to hear the conversation, Girl B said with disdain, “Maybe when I’m 35!” Evidently Girl B wouldn’t have been caught dead in something so old-looking as what Girl A had suggested. Being significantly past 35, I was amused.

When I got to the checkout with my purchases, I arrived in the middle of yet another conversation between two young women. They were not customers, but employees. They were in an animated conversation about a third person who was embarrassed about some social faux pas he had committed. My cashier’s response to the situation included the statement: “I’m not five years old!”

Alas, it seems that sometimes we are afraid people will see us as too young and at other times we fear being thought of as too old. I certainly know how that feels. I well remember an event during my first professional job soon after Ray and I married. My position at a Lexington, Kentucky, engineering firm was as an urban planner. While doing research at the state capitol in Frankfort, someone asked me if I was doing a high school report. I also remember an offer for a senior discount at a fabric store about the time I turned fifty.

Ah, age. There is nothing any of us can do about the fact of it, . . .

. . . but there is much we can do about our attitudes toward our own age, the ages of other adults, and even the ages of our children.

• Do you feel pressure to put your little boy in kindergarten this fall because a relative thinks you should?
• Are you tempted to say your teen is graduating next spring (against your better judgment) because his or her friends are graduating or because your own friend’s teen is graduating?
• Do you dread when someone asks the age of your “late” reader — or “late” speller or “late” mathematician? And just who, pray tell, decides what is late?

I am grateful that you as a homeschooling mama are free from the “Too Young or Too Old?” question. You have the freedom to observe your child, walk alongside your child, comfort your child, push your child at the right times, wait for your child at the right times, and trust your child to the Father who loves him or her.

Acts 17:26 teaches me that:

. . . He made from one man every nation of mankind
to live on all the face of the earth,
having determined their appointed times
and the boundaries of their habitation . . . .
Acts 17:26

God determined the year you were born and the year I was born and the years our children were born. As we learn to trust Him in everything, let’s throw all these ages and expectations into that basket full of realities in our lives and give them to our trustworthy Father.

There is an appointed time for everything.
And there is a time for every event under heaven . . . .
Ecclesiastes 3:1

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