Marriage Mondays ~ Aging Husbands

While we worry about whether or not to color our gray, how to let out our jeans, and how to lift up what sags, our husbands are getting older too. You may spend a lot of time and energy (and $?) trying to slow down the aging process, only to roll over one morning and realize you’re married to an old man!

What will you do? What kind of wife will you be?

This weekend my mom and dad came to visit. I haven’t had the privilege of spending a lot of my adult Mother’s Days with my mom, so this was a treat. It also gave us the chance to semi-celebrate their marriage of 50 years. Being the “out of town” daughter, I see evidence of my parents growing older … and I think they see signs that Jeff and I aren’t getting any younger, either. In fact, I see signs of myself looking and acting more and more like my mom did when she was 40-something (why be specific?). That’s a legacy I’m glad for.

As a husband grows older, our relationship changes. Changes are both physical and emotional, spiritual and relational. As if to remind me of this, Jeff came home with a limp after his long run Friday morning. Our bodies feel the effects of the years and the miles and the demands we have put on them. My dad is just recovering from a 2nd knee surgery this winter; my mom reflected on the days when my dad was pounding the pavement in his 40’s . When a husband and wife age together, they experience the challenges that come with years, but they get to enjoy the rarely-known-anymore quality of having lived long together and having stayed long together. There’s a comfort and a confidence that comes with aging together.

Not all wives grow better with age. The love story of Rebekah and Isaac started out so beautifully, when she was found at the well by a servant from afar and invited to come back as the betrothed of the master’s beloved son. She went with the servant, first seeing her 40 year old Isaac when he was out in the evening field, meditating. She dismounted, asking who the man was, and the rest is romantic history. (Check out the excerpt here) Until Isaac grew old … and Rebekah with him.

“When Isaac was old and his eyes were dim so that he could not see, he called Esau his older son and said … ‘Behold, I am old; I do not know the day of my death'” (Gen. 27:1-3).

The young man who sent a search party for his beloved, glimpsed her in the evening field, took her into his tent as his wife, and then prayed to God for the gift of their child had become the elderly man in the last season of life.  No doubt he had his quirks, was challenging to care for in his blindness, and was less energetic than the young man of years before, but that’s part of the “in sickness and in health” part of the covenant we make. Somewhere in those years together, his devoted Rebekah became deceitful, wanting her own way, manipulating circumstances, willing to sabotage her Isaac’s honor to have her way. She did not age well as a wife.  Read the whole story here.

Our husbands are aging, and so are we. I have a half used bottle of Ibuprofen to prove it.  It’s not always easy, as the lady up the street from us knows today, while she sits in a nursing home beside the bedside of her silent husband. Not easy. But even our aging and all that goes with it is used for our growth and God’s glory. “So we do not lose heart. Though our outer self is wasting away, our inner self is being renewed day by day” (2 Cor. 4:16).

I wonder how different “Old Rebekah” would’ve been if she would’ve spent their elder years nurturing her inner self day by day, instead of worrying about the outer. I want people to say that “Old Julie” loves “Old Jeff” even more than she did and even better than she did when they married way back in 1990!

Your marriage is getting older. Are you aging well?