Last week I read a post by fellow blogger Linda Lee on Wrinkles. It go me to thinking about wrinkles in general and my own furrows in particular.

Young people don’t think about wrinkles because they have none. They have no wrinkles because they haven’t lived long enough to have experienced the stuff that causes wrinkles. (My apologies to those who had troubled childhoods. I can relate.) It is life that makes wrinkles; happy lines around the eyes and mouth from the joys, and deep furrows of the brow from too much thinking and sorrow. Couples long-married have watched each other change from smooth-faced lovers to life partners with creased and lined countenances (Fifty-seven years for me and my wife).

In addition to the contoured roadmap etched on my face by eight decades of life, there are several scars owing to my reckless youth and my latter poor sense of spatial relationships. Finally there’s the daily insult of strap marks on my cheeks from the CPAP mask I’m forced to wear at night so that I don’t expire prematurely from failing to breathe.

So I consider my wrinkles to be like chevrons on the sleeve of an old Army Sergeant’s uniform; symbols of a long tour of duty. I choose to celebrate, rather than mourn, the deep lines that life has carved into my face. My heavenly Father has known me and cared for me since before I was even born. He has carried me through all the “dangers, toils, and snares” of my experience. He has kept me in the faith, wept with me over the sorrows, disciplined me in my rebellious wanderings, led me along interesting and unknown paths, and preserved me for these many long years. 

God gave me work to do and the means to do it with. He’s placed people in my path to fill the empty holes left by my childhood. He has given me a family to love: wife, children, grandchildren. He has joined me to His great family on earth, the church. And He has promised to one day bring me home, wrinkles and all.

“… even to your old age I am he,

and to gray hairs I will carry you.

I have made, and I will bear;

I will carry and will save.”

Isaiah 46:4 (ESV)