"I am Eighty-Two Years Old!"

Yesterday I met a beautiful woman.

We were walking around a park, witnessing the creation both of the Father and of His "sub-creators," as J.R.R. Tolkien would say. 

We loved watching the mothers strolling around with their babies while the elderly, behatted, sometimes bespectacled people sat around stone tables, chatting and playing games.

In one gazebo, we saw yet another group of sweet elderly people. But one of them, rather than staring or even smiling, actually beckoned us to come over. The wrinkles deepened in the corners of her eyes as she waved her fragile yet strong hands.

As we walked in, she and her friends began laughing; she jumped up and down and clapped her hands for joy. Her friends gathered round to take pictures with us, but she was interested in more than that.

She wanted to dance.

So she grabbed my friend's hand and began twirling herself around, laughing the whole time. She then skipped over to another friend, and then another, grabbing each person's hands and twirling.

When she would stop to take a picture with one of us, she would wrap her wrinkled arms around our unwrinkled faces, deepening her own wrinkles with even more laughter.

And then, as I began conversing with her, she clapped and jumped up and down as she said, 

"I am eighty-two years old!"

Her friends laughed and commented on how happy she was; I commented on how healthy she was. She couldn't care less about our comments, regardless of their content. She was too busy dancing.

When I turn eighty-two years old, I want to look back on eighty-two years of softening and enlarging my heart, of keeping it open to my Creator and to all people but closed to cynicism, of keeping it open to thankfulness and grace but closed to self-pity. I want to laugh and clap.

I want to be too busy dancing.