Recently, Katherine Long’s daughter Eleanor wrote the following after spending a week with her mother here on Lookout Mountain. The insight of this enclosed poem is simply priceless. The poem was a discovered treasure among her grandmother’s personal affects. This poem serves as a wise corrective to the often misguided and distorted thinking about aging that is so prevalent. Katherine passed away on July 27, 2018. Pause and savor the truth herein.
I spent last week at my mother’s house on Lookout Mountain. She sleeps most of the time now and says very little, but seems comfortable and content. I spent my time at her bedside going through boxes brought down from the attic and came across this poem stuck in the pages of HER mother’s well-worn Bible. My grandmother lived to be 97.
“They say that I am growing old
I’ve heard them tell it times untold
In language plain and bold,
But I AM NOT GROWING OLD!
This frail old shell in which I dwell
Is growing old, I know full well.
But I am not the shell.
What if my hair is turning gray,
What if my eyesight’s growing dim,
I still can see to follow Him
Who sacrificed His life for me
Upon the cross of Calvary.
Why should I care if Time’s elf plow
Has left its furrows in my brow?
Another house, not made with hand
Awaits me in the Glorious Land.
What though I falter in my walk,
What though my tongue refuse to talk,
I still can tread the narrow way;
I still can watch and praise and pray.
My hearing may not be as keen
As in the past it might have been;
Still, I can hear my Savior say
In whispers soft, ‘This is the Way.’
The outward man, do what I can
To lengthen out this life’s short span,
Shall perish and return to dust
As everything in nature must.
The inward man, the Scriptures say,
Is growing stronger every day
Then how can I be growing old
When safe within my Savior’s fold?
‘Ere long, my soul shall fly away
And leave this tenement of clay.
This robe of flesh I’ll drop, and rise
To seize the Everlasting Prize.
I’ll meet you on the streets of gold
And prove that
I’M NOT GROWING OLD!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!”