I remember well the first time I suffered a back problem. I was a teenager, probably about sixteen, and I was at the home of Marie, my youngest sibling on my father’s side. I was playing with her son Billy, my nephew, who was a few years younger than me. Other of my nieces/nephews/Billy’s cousins might have been there, but I only recall for sure the two of us.

We were playing with an old syringe. Billy would fill it with water and we’d take turns squirting it on each other. I remember that he had just given me the syringe which he had filled in the bathroom sink. I remember having my finger on the bottom to keep the water from spilling before the stopper could be re-inserted into the cylinder. I was reaching out to hand it to him when my back betrayed me for the first time in my life.

I must have looked ridiculous. There I stood, like a mannequin frozen into position, holding out my arm to give Billy the syringe. He took no notice of my condition, just took the syringe and went out to deliver the next shot. I withdrew like a whipped puppy to suffer in silence, and eventually the problem went away. But like Satan when he tempted Jesus in the wilderness, the back pain only departed for a season.

But thankfully it was a long season. The next back problem I remember was when I was doing some work in my garage in the late 1990s. I bent my knees and reached to the garage floor to pick up a forty pound bag of concrete mix. When I started lifting, my lower back, the portion of my spine just at the place where my belt crosses, rebelled. It felt like the turn key on a can of SPAM (a good Google search for younger folks) had been rammed and twisted right in the middle of my spine. Recovery from that little episode took a little longer, but occasional twinges in that area serve as reminders that all is not as well in that area of my back as was once true.

Just a few months ago, my nephew Joe was helping me move some furniture in my home library and garage shed. The next morning, when I started to rise from bed, that section in my back sent its harshest message yet. It seemed my back did not want to bend to allow my feet to touch the floor. After a minute or so I managed to stand upright next to the bed, but it seemed my feet didn’t want to go anywhere. In another minute or two I managed to walk to the bathroom, just a few feet away. The more I moved the better it seemed things were going—at least until I started to change clothes. By the end of the day it seems all is well again, until I turn in bed, and until my feet hit the floor the next morning. I repeat this scenario every morning, just like in the old Bill Murray movie Groundhog Day. This tidbit I received in my email inbox from a friend sums it up well: “I see people about my age mountain climbing; I feel good getting my leg through my underwear without losing my balance.”

And so it is with me. I remember Preacher Charlie Lynch saying in one of his sermons that as he got older it seemed he woke every morning with a new pain. Preacher Oliver Wolfenbarger said in one of his sermons that when you went to the doctor and he said there’s nothing else that can be done to help with an affliction, you felt like punching him right in the nose.

Yet I cannot complain. If I should decide to, I only have to remember the excruciating pain my wife has endured the past two weeks as she has begun her recovery from a total knee replacement. I only have to look at those stooped with age who cannot sit or stand upright, and haven’t been able to do so for several years. I only have to think of those who have endured back surgeries and have emerged either no better or in worse condition. I only have to think of my nephew Eddie McMurray, who has been in a nursing home for more than fifteen years suffering from MS. And the list can go on, and on, and . . .

The truth of the matter is that we do all we can to take good care of our bodies (most of us all the more as we age), but no number of surgeries or amount of medicine will produce immortality on this earth. In the Scriptures, the Apostle Paul spoke of a thorn in the flesh he had endured for three years. We all have thorns in the flesh, some temporary, some recurring, and some terminal. In the end, all we have is God’s grace to endure, and God told Paul that His grace was sufficient.

With respect to aging, I leave you with this inspiring thought from my email world.

I’m at that age where my mind still thinks I’m 29,
my humor suggests I’m 45,
while my body mostly keeps asking if I’m sure I’m not dead yet.

As yet another bit of wisdom from an email I received put it: not in jail, not in a mental hospital, not in a grave—I’d say I’m having a very good day.