There comes a point in life when growing older asks something unexpected of us.
Not simply endurance, but discernment.
We begin to learn that love does not require us to fix everything, carry everyone, solve every problem, or answer every request with yes.
Sometimes love requires presence.
Sometimes love requires patience.
And sometimes love requires the difficult honesty of saying, I cannot do this anymore.
As we grow older, our bodies change. Our energy changes. What once seemed simple can become risky. A ladder is no longer just a ladder. A repair is no longer always a small job. A favour can become something much larger than anyone first imagined.
And family has a way of complicating all of this.
We carry old expectations. Old roles. Old assumptions about who helps, who fixes, who comes when called, who takes responsibility. Sometimes those patterns continue long after they have stopped making sense.
There is love in family, but there can also be obligation, guilt, resentment, and expectations that are difficult to untangle.
I have been thinking about this recently while listening again to one of my songs, “Grace Was Always There.”
I wrote it after a period of deep sadness.
A difficult phone conversation with my mother and sisters had left me feeling hurt, heavy, and emotionally drained. The next day, while I was out with the children, a stranger quietly reached out and helped us cross the street.
It was such a small thing.
A hand.
A gesture.
A moment of kindness from someone who did not know what I was carrying.
But something in me shifted.
The sadness had not disappeared. Nothing had been resolved. The family situation had not magically changed.
But suddenly I noticed something else.
Goodness was still there.
Kindness was still there.
Grace had not vanished simply because I was hurting.
That experience eventually became the heart of the song:
Grace was always there Only noticed, only welcomed In the ordinary day.
And later:
Grace does not deny the darkness Or pretend that pain’s not here.
Those lines strike me differently now.
Perhaps because growing older teaches us that grace does not always arrive as a solution.
Sometimes grace is the wisdom to recognize limits.
Sometimes grace is realizing that a problem is not ours to fix.
Sometimes grace is learning that another person’s expectations do not automatically become our responsibility.
And sometimes grace is the courage to say no without withdrawing love.
This is especially difficult in family.
We want to help. We want to honour our parents. We want to be generous. We want to avoid conflict. And when our parents themselves are aging, there is an added tenderness to all of it.
We know time is limited.
We know they are vulnerable.
We know there may come a day when we wish we could hear their voice one more time.
And yet love still needs boundaries.
My husband is older now too. There are things he once did without hesitation that I no longer want him doing. Climbing ladders. Taking on large repairs. Putting himself at risk because someone needs something fixed.
There comes a point when saying, Please ask someone else, is not selfishness.
It is wisdom.
It is care.
It is acknowledging reality.
Perhaps part of aging is accepting that we cannot control everything anymore.
We cannot control how family members think.
We cannot change lifelong patterns overnight.
We cannot make everyone understand our choices.
We cannot prevent every disappointment.
And we cannot carry every burden simply because someone places it in our hands.
We can, however, decide how we respond.
That may be one of the quieter graces of growing older.
Not withdrawal.
Not indifference.
But discernment.
The grace to know what is ours to carry — and what is not.
Listening to “Grace Was Always There” again some weeks after writing and releasing it, I found myself hearing the final prayer differently:
Holy Spirit, keep me waking Keep my heart attentive there To ordinary goodness Quietly unfolding.
Perhaps being awake to grace also means being awake to truth.
To our limits.
To our bodies.
To the needs of those we love.
And to the difference between loving someone and trying to rescue them from everything.
We may not be able to repair every relationship.
We may not be able to solve every family problem.
We may not be able to say yes as often as we once did.
But grace was never dependent upon our ability to fix everything.
Grace was always there.
And perhaps, as we grow older, we are simply learning how to see it — even in the word no.
Grace Was Always There
🙏❤️
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