David: Viewing old age as a gift—a gift not all that many are given. That’s a good summary of our podcast discussion from a week ago, Karen. I’d like to pick up on that conversation again this visit, that’s because we both now know for sure that we fit into the old age category.

Karen: You actually had some doubts about that? We get to be among the first to receive a COVID-19 vaccination whenever it comes around because we’re both in the 75-and-over classification. How about that? We feel highly honored.

David: Praise the Lord.

Intro: Welcome to the Before We Go Podcast featuring Dr. David Mains and his wife, noted author Karen Mains. Here’s David and Karen Mains.

David: Karen, last visit I did most of the talking. To make sure that’s not the case go around, I am prepared to pepper you with questions. Let’s begin with do you think of yourself as old—apart from being part of the category this coronavirus vaccination?

Karen: I’m sure there are some listeners who are thinking I complained about you talking too much in our last podcast. But I didn’t!

David: No, no. I think the Holy Spirit said to me, ‘You talked way more than you should.’

Karen: I didn’t feel that way.

David: Do you think of yourself as old?

Karen: I do, David. And actually, I’m enjoying this age. I’m 77 and in the last part of my life. I’d like to say to people, “Don’t be afraid of getting old because they are just a lot of gifts in these later years that I don’t think we’re not told much about or don’t know how to anticipate. I’d just talk about that more.

David: Here’s a guy who was really, really old in Scripture. Do you know who I’m talking about?

Karen: I’m guessing Methuselah? Was it Methuselah?

David: Yes! Being raised in a Christian home you get these trick questions. He’s the oldest man in the Bible, 969 years old. I don’t try to figure that out.

Karen: Wow, I didn’t realize it was that much! He really was the oldest.

David: Yeah. He was. These are questions you probably know the answer to but I’ll ask them anyway. I’ve read this so I sound very intelligent. Methuselah’s father?

Karen: I’m getting Enoch?

David: Oh my goodness. You pulled it out. Enoch was the saint who walked with God, and he was not, for God took him. Apparently, he didn’t die like normal people die. He just went into the presence of the Lord.

Karen: That’s lovely. Is that in Scripture?

David: Yes, in Genesis.

Karen: Oh beautiful. I wish we could all have that kind of ending. A commendation like that.

David: Elijah went up to heaven in a chariot of fire of horses. I think I’d prefer the Elijah. Ok, I got the father’s name of Methuselah.  That’s Enoch. Now Methuselah has a son, we’ll skip him. And then he has a grandson. Who’s that?

Karen: Go ahead.

David: Well, this is wild because it is Noah.

Karen: Oh, my goodness. It’s Noah.

David: Exactly. It’s in the early chapters in Genesis. That’s all kind of fascinating. Methuselah, just one little thing. He died the same year as the flood according to the Genesis account. We don’t know whether he died in the flood or before the flood, but it’s kind of trivial. Now some cultures honor gray hair, and some don’t. What about Jewish culture back in Bible times?

Karen: I think elders were revered. You know, David, we know what the age expectancy is for modern people. It’s in the 70’s. But that wasn’t the case in those days. The older generation died earlier. So, to have elders, they were really revered and respected. And people appreciated them for what they did have to give.

David: What about other cultures we’ve visited? The Lord’s been good to us. We’ve been in many countries. What would you say?

Karen: Well, do you remember being in Africa, in Kenya not too long ago? And you were white-haired, and I’m white-haired. People were so lovely to us—the citizens of Kenya, I think it was. And someone said to me then, “You know, this culture reveres old age white-haired people”. And again, the same difficulty is that very often the elders died before they reached old age. So, we did feel that there. And I think that’s again the reason why there is a respect. We have an American culture which is youth-oriented. And I think we really do have a lot of ageism in our culture. And we absorb that ageism. There isn’t the reverence for the old ones. They, you know, move to retirement centers, or they’re not visited, or they don’t have the power in our culture that they do in some others.

David: I would say that’s very true. And when I was younger, I didn’t have the interest or the reverence for age as I should have.

Karen: Well, and I don’t think we’re taught that, although I had that more in my family, in the Burton family, because there was a whole clan of Burtons who were older.

David: I think more so in your family than in my family. Yeah, very. And they were wonderful people. I mean, in some ways, the way I feel about age probably has a lot to do with those people because they were filled with laughter and love. They loved the Lord. They loved one another. So there was a great model for me as a young woman. How much do you think about aging, Karen? Is it on your mind all the time?

Karen: It’s there, but it’s not worrying about aging. It’s just I’m accepting the fact that I am in my last decades. You know, I’m 77. I’m grateful to be as well as I am and active as I am and have a lot of interest areas that stimulate me. How about you? Do you think about aging very much?

David: I’m aware of it, but I wouldn’t say I think about it a lot.

Karen: It’s not a worrisome thought. It’s, you know, the same presence you have when you’re in your 50s or 60s. I mean, but maybe more, maybe a little bit more, so you think about it a little bit more.

David: I see people and they will refer to their age, and then I’ll think sometimes, “I am really old”. He’s talking to me in his 60s; you know, I’m middle 80s. So in your mind, what would be a good age to live to? And what would be an age where you would say, “I sure hope I’m still not around when I get to that age”?

Karen: I don’t think it’s age specific. I think it’s, “Am I still functional? Am I still able to contribute ?” None of us want to be a burden on the ones we love. And there are some people who are disabled who still are a blessing to the people around them. And you hear this a lot. Yes. So they have wonderful attitudes, and there’s the love, you know, that they’re able to convey. And so it’s not so much that—I just don’t want to become dysfunctional. That’s one—life for me needs to end when I am nothing but a burden. Someone, you know, Alzheimer’s.

David: I would hate to go that way. So I think everyone feels that way who’s in the aging process. You have met many people in your life; name one or two great-haired people you thought highly of.

Karen: You know, that’s a really interesting question because sometimes when we meet people who are in their last years—and we’re, let’s say, in our 40s or 50s—that’s all we know about them. We see that aging process in them. They’re not as active. They’re not, you know, and that’s who we think we know. But when you have time to get their life story—sit down and have a chat, and then you begin to ask them questions about themselves—all of a sudden your feeling is, “Oh my goodness, this woman or man has lived an extraordinary life”. So, can I tell about one person there? Okay. I served on the board of a Medical Ambassadors International, an extraordinary faith-based development group. Most of them were medical people who were on the field or on the board who used health as the window to walk into community development all the way around the world. So, there was one man who they all would refer to and quote him, and then finally I met him. He wasn’t on the board, but he was in and out very frequently. I think he was in his 70s. So, I met him at that stage in life. However, this man had gone to Africa as a missionary for Campus Crusade, and in the process of being there, he began to develop a methodology that was faith-based, but he moved from the concept of the white missionary being the authority. So, they moved him out of the leadership. And not, well, particularly at that time. I mean, this is 30, 40 years ago. And he then developed a methodology, a teaching methodology that empowered the ones who were the national workers. And because you had a semi-literate process with some of them, and even them hadn’t been educated, but they were leaders in their tribes or their community, it had to be a participatory learning situation. They had to learn by doing. So, when I began to find out about that methodology and then realized that this was the man who had developed it in Africa, because by the time I came on the MAI board, this methodology was just going like wildfire across the world. Development organizations were picking it up, mission organizations were picking it up. I mean, it was an extraordinary thing.

David: So, he had a worldwide influence.

Karen: I mean, he had a worldwide impact. David, millions of people were made better. Millions of people were made better because of.

David: Probably changed the course of mission work.

Karen: It did. It did. And in a course of the degradation of poverty and in ignorance. I mean, he was just an extraordinary man. So, I think very frequently we need to look at the gray-haired or white-haired or dyed gray-haired/white-haired people among us and give them a chance. You know, let’s say, “What do you mean by that ?” Let’s get to know who they are and what they have done in their life, where they have traveled, what work they loved, and the thing that gives them pleasure looking back on their life. I mean, any of those questions, because there’s so much to be learned from them, number one. And number two, they will surprise many of us because we have this American ageism. They’re old, and, you know, we’ll put them in a nursing home or they’ll retire to a retirement center, where they really still are very vibrant and have much to contribute to intergenerational situations. I love the intergenerational dialogues where you have young and you have mid-life and then you have older, because I just think that there’s so much in that.

David: Would you have been more respectful to that person?

Karen: Well, I learned as I was on that board for eight years in the process. And actually there were all kinds of people like that on the board, but they were younger, you know. I mean, there were all kinds of world changers. It was an extraordinary group of people, but he was one who was definitely of the older age set.

David: Talk about it in terms of your family. Do you have the same feelings that people you might not have paid that much attention to because they’re a grandma or grandpa, whatever, then all of a sudden you realize that person lived a very extraordinary life?

Karen: My Gram comes to mind. She had been with my Gram.

David: When you say Gram, that’s on your mom’s side. Gram Brannam, my mother’s mother.

Karen: Now, Gram was not an intellectual; she was a doer. Her first husband, Bill Wittland, had died, and then she had married again, and that ended in divorce, which was very unusual for that time. And I knew her mostly because she would come and spend three or four days in our home. Mother was the executive secretary—and now I understand she practically ran a world mission because the men were always overseas—and so Mother was the executive secretary. That made everything go. So, Gram would come, and she and I were the team that kept the house clean.

David: How old were you at this time?

Karen: Oh, from grade school on. You know, I mean, she was in my life. She’s always been in my life. And when I think back on her, you know, I sort of measure my physical ability. Well, Gram was 72, and I remember jumping off of a radiator—because she was one of those big old-time radiators. She’d been doing the sills on the door and jumped up on it. I think highly of her. What I didn’t realize at that time that hit me later was she was an extraordinary seamstress. All my clothes were handmade. They were made from—this was very typical of that generation—handmade from clothes that had been worn and discarded, then she would make clothes for us. But she also worked as a Singer sewing machine saleswoman at Marshall Field and Company downtown, one of the big retail shops downtown, one of the classic ones. So, we would go down and then I would see her in her professional life. She wasn’t just my grandma running around barefoot and..

David: cleaning the house in the house dress on.

Karen: Yeah, was elsewhere running mission stuff. Dressed fit to kill. I mean, she made her own clothes. They were very tailored, and she had that blue kind of stuff that ladies at that age put on their gray hair. But she was the top Singer saleswoman in the Chicago area for a decade or so. Isn’t that extraordinary? And I remember watching her on the floor at Marshall Field, and she immediately established rapport. But because she knew how to sew, that expertise was the thing that made her such an extraordinary saleswoman.

David: Isn’t an interesting story? Fascinating. Okay. What’s good about aging and what is bad about aging?

Karen: Personally, right? I think the best thing about aging, if you have aged well, is that you realize you have a wisdom. I’m not sure you always call it that, but that’s what it is. There’s a wisdom that’s developed over the years that makes you trustworthy and capable of understanding where people are coming from. Those years help you to be a good decision maker. For me, there’s a lot of tenderness toward people just because I have heard so much of where they’ve come from, the bad, terrible backgrounds. You know, some people you wonder how they’ve survived. So, with age comes many, many gifts, David, as far as I’m concerned. Do you feel the same way? I’m wondering.

David: Oh, of course I do. But I’m asking the question. You’re still asking. You’re almost caught up with how much I talked last time. Okay. But what’s bad about aging?

Karen: I think the ageism of our culture is one of the bad things of the American culture. I pulled some figures. The proportion of older adults that are 60 years or older in the world’s population is expected to increase from 10% to 22% in 2050. And that’s a big jump. We have an older population because there’s a declining fertility rate. I mean, families used to have five, six, 10 children. Now it’s one or two. So elderly people are living longer, and their quality of life is a growing concern. In a study, one-third of adults 60 years or older were classified as successful agers. So, let me just tell you what successful aging is, how it’s achieved. And they have criteria. These are the researchers, but I won’t go into that. How to stay happy and healthy as you age: Stay socially active with friends and family. I like that. I mean, that we know that in the back of our head that the isolation or feeling it would be more with COVID-19. But having friends, being a part of a group—if you don’t have close friends, join a group—they advise. This one we all know and we don’t do: Stay physically active with regular exercise. Exercising as we age is crucial in order to decrease our risk of heart disease. It decreases developing high cholesterol. Just a whole gamut of stuff. You have to really get that exercise. Okay.

David: I’m going specifically back to you instead of statistics now. Okay. I accuse you of still having enough ideas to keep you busy for the next 25 years. Well, that would make you 102. Oh dear. Now I’m bringing reality to it. What are say, two, that you really want to see accomplished? I don’t want more than two, or you’ll overwhelm me.

Karen: Let me just explain that you are a single-focused person, right?

David: This is a prelude to answering my question.

Karen: I’ve always been a multitasker.

David: Oh my goodness! That’s true. Yes.

Karen: Two that are really, I feel like the Lord is pushing me to finish this up. One is, I’m involved in putting together a team that will help me launch a platform some way digitally—yet to be designed—but on hospitality. This is a dying form of socialization, and there is never a time in our American culture when we have needed it more.

David: You’re saying because of COVID?

Karen: Because of COVID, because of loneliness and isolation that was rampant even before COVID hit. So, what I’m trying to do is develop a program where we will have a national platform, but then go into churches and have something that teaches churches how to teach the people to be hospitable, how to call out that hospitality to committee people who have a passion for it. That’s a big dream. And the second one is to finish the book up on listening, which you’ve been nagging me about. And I just want you to know that your nagging is work because I wake up in the middle of the night thinking about the project I’m working on. And as the Lord has said to me, “These are not your projects, Karen; they’re my projects”. The projects God is asking me to work on, and I was really writing that book in my head. I woke up writing it. So, I’m wanting to spend the whole three or four months of 2021 just doing that.

David: Okay, this is a major book. Yes. And you’re thinking it would take three to four months?

Karen: I’ve done a lot of work on it. Three to four months to get a first draft and what’s called a partial when you submit it to a publisher. But it’s on listening, and that I think is one of the most powerful tools in our toolkit. Yeah, listening to one another, but listening so that person we’re listening to feels listened to, heard, and understood. When we all feel heard and understood, David, the brain does what our teenagers in our life would call a happy dance. And that tap-toeing just goes through the entire body.

David: It’s when they know they have been—

Karen: when they have been heard and understood. I mean, there are neurological studies on this now. Brain science is going way beyond anything we ever imagined. They can even tell what chemicals are released when someone feels heard and understood. This is something we all can learn to do. And certainly Christians should. Christians absolutely should be doing that.

David: Right. I asked a very good question, which was “Tell me two”. If I had said “Tell me 15,” you probably would have rattled off 15 things that you want to do. And you not only have your own unfulfilled dreams. When I tell you about mine, single-minded David, you instantly have suggestions regarding who I should be contacting and what I should start doing like immediately.

Karen: I’m a catalyst kind of person. Every idea needs a catalyst. And what I love the most is when I work in sync with companions with similar interests. So, what I’m doing right now is pulling friends—many of them who are the same age that we are—and saying to them, “Do you want to work on this project with me?” And fortunately, with virtual meetings, we can do that. I can do that with people all over the world. So, I’m kind of pulling out the people I know from our generations of friends and saying, “This great idea, I can’t do it by myself.” Will you come alongside? And they’re great. I think it’s going to be more fun than any of us ever dreamed.

David: Do you have a section of scripture you like that relates to aging?

Karen: I like that one where, can you remember what it is, David? It’s “Precious in the sight of the Lord”—

David: Is it “death of his saints”? Is it “Precious in the sight of the Lord”? It depends on your version.

Karen: Okay. Well, anyway, I just think that’s such a beautiful scripture for those of us who are old with death closer than it’s ever been to hold in our hearts.

David: I asked you scripture; I should ask you, and then I’ll kind of give an answer of myself first. A person in scripture who’s older that you like. This is about Abraham. It’s in the New Testament. “Without weakening in his faith, he faced the fact that his body was as good as dead since he was about 100 years old and that Sarah’s womb was also dead. Yet he did not waver through unbelief regarding the promise of God, but was strengthened in his faith and gave glory to God, being fully persuaded that God had power to do what he had promised”. Oh, I mean, that’s gorgeous. Who’s going to give him a son?

Karen: But aren’t those—those are just—we read it again. That is just extraordinary.

David: Well, it’s just—I mean, we know this story. The reality of it all hits you so strongly when you read those.

Karen: “Without weakening in his faith”—now he’s an old man, a lot older than we are—”without wavering in his faith, he faced the fact that his body was as good as dead since he was about 100 years old and that Sarah’s womb was also dead. Yet he did not waver through unbelief regarding the promise of God, but was strengthened in his faith and gave glory to God, being fully persuaded that God had power to do what he had promised”. Oh, that’s wonderful. What a wonderful scripture.

David: Yeah. Okay. Well, all we’ve been doing is just discussing, and that kind of brings me to a key sentence, which is what I wanted to do. It’s good to talk seriously about aging with someone you love. I’ll say it again. It’s good to talk seriously about aging with someone you love.

Karen: And let me add to that, with someone you love and someone who is in the eldering process. You know, I’m good to talk it over with people you love, but I think there is such a beautiful connection for us to say, “These are the things I’m learning through the old age process. This is what’s good. This is what I’m struggling with. These are the things that the Lord is teaching me”. There is just extraordinary potential for connection in that kind of conversation.

David: Well, I’ve enjoyed talking with you, and my feeling is that as people talk with one another—and there will be numerous conversations—there will be great benefit in that.

Outgo: You’ve been listening to the Before We Go podcast. And if you would like to write to us, please send us an email at the following address: hosts@beforewego.show. That’s all lowercase letters: hosts@beforewego.show. If you’ve enjoyed this podcast, please remember to rate, review, and share on whatever platform you listen. This podcast is copyright 2021 by Mainstay Ministries, Post Office Box 30, Wheaton, Illinois 60187.