Over thirty years ago, Wendy's debuted their "Where's the Beef?" commercial campaign, starring Clara Peller as an older lady demanding more meat from her fast-food hamburger establishment. The campaign was a huge success for Wendy’s.

This may be most important communication you have ever received from Elder Source! So please forgive me for generically addressing this letter!

We learn the lesson in our youth and find it true throughout life; people are judged by how they look on the outside more so than whom they are on the inside. No story paints a better picture of this fact than the one about Leah.

How you would react if you knew with certainty that the following would be doubled in the next few years: your chance of being severely injured falling off a ladder, your chance of dying in a plane crash, or your chance of being incapacitated due to poor health choices. Would you pay closer attention and make some adjustments?

I have always been on the quiet side of life. My mind is almost always engaged in thought and in observing life and people around me. However, in spite of all my thinking and observing, the following life lesson took years for me to learn.

I have reached the point in life where the years I have lived are more than the years I have left, and I am really, really okay with that. My focus changed when our two kids got married within a month of each other.

We are asked every year as December 25th draws nigh, “Are you ready for Christmas?” Most of us respond by saying we aren’t or we haven’t even started. Sadly, the question and response have more to do with buying gifts for each other than it does in the celebration of Christ’s birth.

I grew up in a real neighborhood in a small rural town in Illinois. Back then neighbors talked to each other and shared the abundance of their gardens. In the summer neighbors would sit on their front porches or in lawn chairs under the shade of a tree.

As you read the brief interaction below you may see yourself. You may be a son or a daughter watching your parents or grandparents age, or you may be nearing the age of the father. Life has a way of sneaking up on us.

As I begin this blog I am sitting in a Starbucks in a neighboring community…waiting. The sky is overcast. A hurricane off the coast has already caused strong rains with the promise of much more to come. Inside the noise and conversation from the baristas is continuous.

On the day we closed the sale of our house a few years ago, I apologized to the buyers for the line of garbage bags at the street. Movers had loaded up the things we wanted to keep. We sold or gave away the things we no longer wanted, and the rest we placed at the curb in heavy-duty black garbage bags.

After 21 years of marriage, my wife wanted me to take another woman out to dinner and a movie. She said, “I love you, but I know this other woman loves you and would love to spend some time with you.” 

My mother is 87 and is in poor health. She is still mentally as sharp as ever, but her body is failing to the point that her quality of life is poor at best. With a voice sounding tired and worn out she recently said, “Growing old isn’t for sissies!”

Some years ago my kids were with me as I was driving home from a neighboring town. I had waited too long to get gas, and the car died while going up a hill. We were about a mile from the closest gas station. I coasted back to the bottom of the hill and asked the kids to pray with me.

A number of years ago several people mistook me for a local attorney. On one occasion I was in a grocery store when the attorney’s aunt saw me and addressed me as her nephew. On other occasions I was mistaken for a certain Hollywood star. Unfortunately, both of these men were several years older than me.

I was only ten years old when my grandfather died, and I took his death hard. I can still remember that day and the days leading up to his funeral. He died on a summer Sunday afternoon in our small hometown hospital. He had been watching the Chicago Cubs and had fallen asleep.