Never too soon, nor too late, to stop the aging process

"You are never too young to start handling the problem of aging." I was about 18 when I first heard that. You might take it as a recommendation to wash your face and use a good moisturizer, but I knew this person was telling me I should pray to know my ageless, timeless being as a spiritual idea, a reflection of God.

I remember thinking it was a great idea. But I didn't do it.

So when I was in my thirties and developed arthitic symptoms in one of my hands, I felt guilty and scared. All the shoulda, woulda, coulda thoughts hit me like a falling anvil from the Coyote and the Roadrunner cartoons of my youth.

I berated myself with the question, Why didn't I deal with this sooner? Now that the problem had taken hold, it felt too late. Guilt and fear duped me into ignoring the problem for some time. Then the condition worsened and my knuckles became malformed.

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Around this time I came across a prophecy in the Bible that reassured me that, no matter what, it is never too late to pray and be healed. Making reference to the power of God to meet the human need at any moment, even when it seems beyond all possible hope, Isaiah wrote, "He will not break off a damaged cattail. He will not even put out a smoking wick." (42:3)

I thought of a flower with a broken stem, and a candle that is snuffed out, with nothing but a plume of smoke to indicate the flame that had once been. Divine Spirit can restore life even where it seems to be completely over.

I stopped condemning myself and started to pray for healing. I can still remember certain elements of that prayer because they produced such memorable and quick results.

I considered a statement from Mary Baker Eddy's Science and Health with Key to the Scriptures: "The measurement of life by solar years robs youth and gives ugliness to age. The radiant sun of virtue and truth coexists with being. Manhood is its eternal noon, undimmed by a declining sun." (246)

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The leading thought that I took from this was that I was neither growing up to a perfect and eternal noon, neither was I declining from my highest and best. To stop disease from aging me, I had to see myself as eternally spiritual. Spirituality must be understood to be my permanent state and not merely the product of human development.

As I prayed about what it meant to be fully spiritual now, equiped to be and to do anything God prepared for me in life, I looked down at the painful, disfigured knuckles and said aloud to myself, "That has nothing to do with me."

I remember, upon awakening the next day, I discovered my knuckles to be smooth, supple, painless, and restored to their normal color and function - in a word, perfect.

In the years since, no such symptoms have ever recurred.

Sure, we are never too young to handle the problems of aging. Or too old, for that matter. It looks to me like understanding God as Spirit and what it means to be truly and fully spiritual as God's creation, is the key.

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Remember, you are like the indestructible Roadrunner!
"That coyote is really a crazy clown.
When will he learn that he never can mow him down?"

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