Thursday Th(ink)s - December 18, 2025

I’m quietly enjoying the (still small) trend in Hollywood that allows older women to actually

look their age. Not “ageless.” Not “remarkably youthful.” Just… aged. This is my face. This is

my neck. This is my age. No apology required.

Which raises the old question: Are you only as old as you feel? Of course not. You don’t get to

wish your age away. The clock does not care how vibrant your inner twenty-seven-year-old feels.

You will have another birthday, and—God willing—another after that, until you don’t. You

might feel thirty when you die at eighty, but you will still be eighty. Feelings don’t override

calendars.

As this year wraps up, the evidence of time is unavoidable. Fireworks will explode. Silly hats

will appear. Champagne will be poured. We’ll celebrate a new year while pretending nothing has

changed. But you can’t have it both ways. You don’t get to mark time and deny its effects.

Candles are lit for years we quietly hope didn’t touch us.

What I appreciate about seeing older women simply be their age is that it feels like truth telling.

Not resignation—acceptance. There’s a difference. Acceptance says, This is the season I’m in.

Resignation says, Nothing matters anymore. Aging well lives in the first, not the second.

Somewhere along the way, we let youth masquerade as moral superiority. As if smooth skin

meant wisdom, as if possibility belonged only to the young. Scripture suggests otherwise. Age

carries memory, authority, and discernment. Wrinkles are not a failure of maintenance; they are a

record of survival.

There is also a deep freedom in no longer performing. No auditioning for relevance. No

competing with younger versions of myself. No explaining why my face tells the truth about my

life. I am no longer required to be someone I am not.

Aging exposes our limits—and that’s not bad theology. We were never meant to be infinite. Time

is not a design flaw; it is part of the gift. Mortality keeps us honest. It teaches us to number our

days, not erase them.

So here I am, telling the truth about my years. Not with pride. Not with shame. Just with

gratitude. This is my age. Received, not negotiated.

Big Brains:

“Time, which sees all things, has found you out.” Sophocles

Old Souls:

“The afternoon knows what the morning never suspected.”

Robert Frost

The Ancient of Days:

"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

Norma Jean:
“Aging well is trusting that God knew exactly 
how many years I’d need to become myself.”

Thursday Chat: Aging well begins when we stop arguing with time and start inhabiting it—fully, honestly, and at peace.