Category Archives: old age, maturity

by Anthony Baker | June 11, 2023 · 8:14 pm

How Time Passes!?

I know that what I am about to write, and you are possibly about to read is a tad disturbing and possibly a bummer. However, stick with me for a few minutes and try to follow my still developing thought.

On this day 32 years ago, my father passed away at work. He was 46 years old; I was 24. He died from a massive heart attack while working third-shift security.

This morning before Bible study began at church, several of the men and I were talking about our ages. One of the guys told me with a grin, “I can guarantee I am older than you.” He was wrong – I was two years older than him. I was older than all four sitting at that table… and I also thought they were older than me!

Age is a funny thing, for our actual age and how we feel are more often nowhere close to each other. I still feel in my 20’s, like time stood still when my dad died. I don’t feel 55. Yet, here I am, older than my father was when he died, even older than his father, my grandfather, when he died (age 53). My dad was 24 when his father died, so I wonder if that was the age he felt when he died.

It has now been longer since my father died than I lived up until that day. That feels weird. It also feels weird that I always think of my dad as older than me, no matter how old I get. Time stood still for him as well as it seems it did for me.

That leads me to think about heaven. What will it be like when we see those who have gone before us when we were young, yet now we are adults? The Bible does briefly address some of the question in the last half of 1 Corinthians 15. There, Paul talks about there being a difference in the body we shall receive compared to what we have now. Earthly attained age will evidently have little to no relevance.

Therefore, in conclusion of this thought, at least one thing will be true when we see our loved ones again in Heaven (if we trust in Jesus Christ as our Savior): the saying that “time will be no more” will have as much to do with age as it does the clock.

Your thoughts?

My Mid-Life Crisis

How are you? How are you doing? What’s up?

How do you respond when people check up on you? Do you respond differently to different people? Do you give different answers, some more transparent than others, depending on whom you can trust?

Well, I trust you. Yes, I do. For one reason, you are actually reading this when so many others couldn’t care less. You care enough to get past the introduction.

So, how am I doing? Not well.

I think it was my wife (I can’t remember) who asked me the other day, “Are you having a mid-life crisis?” “Maybe I am,” I replied. I haven’t researched it, so I don’t know. However, I would bet that a definition would include a picture of someone that looks eerily like me.

For one thing, five decades worth of mistakes, miscalculations, stupid decisions, and squandered opportunities continually plague my memories. It’s not that I sit around and meditate on my past until I think of something depressing; they are triggered by ordinary things like a store at the mall, a movie, a song, a smell, an event, an expression, etc. I can drive down one road and be hit with 10 regrets in the span of a mile.

Secondly, there’s all the things I could have done and should have done. Have I accomplished anything? Of course. But when I am in a group of others who’ve accomplished anything similar, I feel like a fake, an imposter. I should be able to fit in, but now I never feel worthy.

I’m not a spiritual giant or anything. I’m not that great of a speaker. I have a very hard time praying. And, based on my cumulative experience, I’m a lousy pastor. Yet, that is all I’ve ever really wanted to be. I wanted to be “man of the Book,” a man with worn knees, a figure behind the pulpit my children would tell their children about.

But here I am, pushing 56 years old, a new employee in an automotive factory, with no savings, no home, a literal antique car to drive, and no real desire to pastor another church.

Simply put, I don’t know who I am anymore. For that matter, I’m not sure I ever did.

I don’t know where life is going to find me 5 or 10 years from now. However, even though I may never be a leader of anything, I can strive to be a good follower of Jesus.

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Filed under Christian Maturity, Depression, old age, maturity, self-worth

Tagged as adulting, aging, faith, mid-life, Religion

by Anthony Baker | March 2, 2021 · 11:29 am

Some Places Never Leave You, Even After You Leave Them

This a view from Edwards Point, the mountain bluff above where I grew up and the pinnacle of every hiking trip I made as a kid.

This is the Tennessee River Gorge. Just across the river is Elder Mountain, where my grandfather hid from revenuers.

To the right is Prentice Cooper Game Reserve. The Cumberland Trail weaves its way through there, down from the top of the mountain, down across the creek, then up to where this scene depicts.

I grew up in the community of Suck Creek. Just out of view, just below the rock bluff, the creek would feed the river. Up until a hundred or so years ago, during hard rain the creek and the river would create a powerful whirlpool capable of pulling small boats under and stopping paddle wheelers.

It was only after a system of dams were built along the Tennessee River (operated by TVA), that the river was tamed enough for safe navigation.

This is also where my Cherokee ancestors on my paternal grandmother’s side resided. They were the ones who actually attacked the early settlers of Nashville when their boats were stuck in the “suck.”

The mountains and the river will always be in my blood. The peaceful drift of the water. The fresh air of old-growth forests. The legends and unforgettable scary bedtime stories from the old-timers.

Unfortunately, much has changed over the last decade. Much of where I spent my childhood and teen years are unrecognizable. Time has exacted a heavy toll from both progress and neglect. And where there was family land that outsiders feared to visit, now there’s million-dollar homes where outsiders moved to “preserve” the beauty.

Yet, I still remember. I still dream. I still imagine. That will never change. Time will only make the memories sweeter and the stories even better.

I may have left, but it’s never left me.

View from Edward’s Point, Signal Mountain, TN

Retired, Rusty Relic: Still Useful

Watercolor & Gouache on Cold-Pressed (by Anthony Baker)

It’s just an old truck sitting in a field. It will most likely (almost guaranteed) never run the dirt roads of middle Georgia again.

But is it worthless? Good for nothing? Useless?

NO!

If nothing else, it inspired this painting – and this post 🙂

What about when people are unable to run the roads like they used to? What about when the old, broken-down, rusty relics from a different era can’t haul the load, only sit where they’re planted?

Are THEY useless?

It’s sad if you think so.

How much is inspiration worth?