I'm Losing My Ever-Loving Mind

Of all the midlife symptoms I was prepared for, nothing has thrown me for a loop like brain farts.

I’m not just talking about occasional memory blips, but entire functions of my once-sharp mind that are now painfully malfunctioning – like vocabulary. I’m a writer, for crying out loud, and lately I can’t remember words I used to use on the regular. I see them, floating fuzzy on the edges of my brain, but I cannot rein them in. The thesaurus has become my lasso. I’m dumb without it.

And I can hardly stand myself.

Just yesterday I had this legit conversation with my sister:

Aging comes with plenty of fallout, I mean, I expected wrinkles and cortisol belly. But who am I without my mental capacity??

The Bible gives us a pretty good answer.

“Trust in the Lord with all your heart and lean not on your own understanding.” (Proverbs 3:5)

We know this verse. Most of us have probably memorized it, kept it stored in our back pocket for those times when we just don’t understand God’s plan, or why He seems to be answering our prayers with a “wait.” But it never occurred to me until now how this Scripture applies to aging, too.

As our minds begin to falter and we can’t trust our own intellect as completely as we used to, we have no choice but to lean on God’s instead. Which is really what we ought to have been doing all along, but isn’t it just like the Lord to lead us to a place of surrender.

And one day, when we’re truly old and unaware, our identity will be secure in God’s memory, rather than our own.

“Even to your old age and gray hairs I am he, I am he who will sustain you. I have made you and I will carry you; I will sustain you and I will rescue you.” (Isaiah 46:4)

I’m not there yet. God willing, I’ve got plenty of years left before dementia overtakes me – and if I live long enough, it will; it’s in our family history. So what do I do with my “level 5” and beyond brain until then?

The same thing God has been calling me and you to since we were young. Trust. Hold fast to faith. And count the goodness He gives, even when we’re wrestling to remember the word “sanctification.”