Achieving the early years of my 70’s I have had the remarkable experiences of various stages of vulnerability. As always, I feel it necessary to remind readers that I have no training is psychology. I did, however, take one course in “Psychology for Law Enforcement Officers” at San Antonio College in the early 1980’s. I loved that class and I got a perfect score on all my tests!

So there stated, is my only “formal” qualification to be writing this. I believe, however, my life experiences and keen insights (?) give me all I need to continue with this post.

Childhood vulnerability is when how we learn to trust, or not trust, our parents, brothers and sisters, teachers, friends and those in authority over us. We are exposed to so much at such a young age. We are content when our trust is rewarded. We are damaged when it is not.

Then come the teenage years when our friends may lead us astray and we, in our vulnerability, go along with them. But there are also those friends who truly have our best in their hearts. They may not be as fun to be around, but they are the healthiest for us in these vulnerable years. Often our childhood trust lessons will determine which of those friends we will follow.

Before we know it, we are young adults and of course we know so much more than anyone else who has ever walked the face of the earth. We could never be so vulnerable as to repeat the mistakes of the generations that have gone before. After all, look how they mess everything up!! We must fix it all before it’s too late. We’ll set this world back on it’s right footing.

Then, often comes the grown up years where we are supposed to work for a living. (yes, I’m old enough to still believe this) We enter a new stage where we may have met ”the one for me”! You marry, have children, buy a house, put up that swing set in the yard and yes, get up for work every day for the r-e-s-t of your life!

The kids go off to college or on to the lives they’ve chosen to explore. Or maybe, at this part of the grown up years, you’ve chosen to remain single. Your influence on others has been remarkable! You have experiences you could never have had if you had been married. You are happy and content and thankful for your singleness.

Then come the years when you are older, when your kids have kids of their own, when you have all you could ever have dreamed of. You’ve made all the right decisions along the way. You’ve been a good parent and you sit back and watch as your grandchildren grow to be the pride of your life! You and your spouse are truly content and plan to grow old together. You make plans for your retirement and begin the golden years together. Or you chose to remain single and you bask in the glory of the accolades you receive as you continue to pour yourself out to those who God brought to you. You are a bit less active, but still doing well, physically and emotionally. In either case, your greatest vulnerability comes in the form of getting out of that chair without too many bones cracking and aching!

Then, suddenly, the one you loved the most is gone. Their time here on earth is over and you are left with yourself, and by yourself, and you feel more vulnerable than you ever imagined. Or you have been single, and the reality of that choice is upon you. You have lead a full life and you are still content. But the people and friends around you are beginning to enter into their eternity. You may begin to wonder how much time there is for your life.

Neither of these places in life are bad, or unusual, or should be questioned about which is right or wrong. These choices of life are what they are. They are the things that brought us joy and fullness of life.

From my personal experience, the only authority on which I can speak, the richest and deepest place of joy at this time in my life comes from the most vulnerable times. The times when we both cried on our honeymoon. How you looked stunned and the boys laughed and wouldn’t let me forget when I called Ed by my ex-husband’s name. How we both made a mess of the early years of our marriage with two grown sons—I pray they forgive us for that and so many hurts prior to that time. And there was the weekend trip to Peru. When we traveled to OCMD each summer together, crossing the Bay Bridge on the way!

The sadness we felt when we learned that our granddaughter has Autism. Then a few years later when we learned another granddaughter had Autism. Learning what to say and what not to say was a challenge we took on together. The joy of watching these grands growing up and learning life for themselves. Then, later to hear that two of our granddaughters have a serious muscular disease.

How we both felt so vulnerable wen he stood in the hallway of a variety of hospitals praying for me as I was rolled into the OR for another surgery. When I waited to hear the outcome of his heart cauterization two weeks after my mother’s passing. The way he stood by me when many untruths were hurled at me by “loved ones.” The eye contact we made when he was singing in the choir and I was in the seats as we praised God together. Seeing his heart in the art he produced. His love of his Creator God never wavered but remained strong. How he struggled with pain as he walked up and down the steps of the arena when we went to watch the Pittsburgh Penguins game, an early birthday gift for me.

The sound of his voice when I got the call from him a week later telling me that he would be picking me up. His chiropractor sent him to the ER for a suspicious swelling. That same night, the day before my 72nd birthday, when the doctor came into the room telling us that he had cancer and that it had spread throughout his body and was inoperable, that the pain he was feeling in his back was from a broken vertebrae. The few months of testing, radiation, immunotherapy, moving from walking, to a walker to wheelchair to not being able to leave the house to not being able to walk at all. To friends coming to the house to offering their prayers and saying their goodbyes, to making plans for his funeral, to his last breath. To his memorial service.

As joyful and as painful as those times may have been, the depth of our vulnerability toward and in each other was a precious gift of God that words can ever express. This is the richness of God’s work in our lives.

I wouldn’t trade the gift of that deep, spiritual vulnerability for anything. But now I’m here, at the most vulnerable moment in the last 32 years of my life trusting that God will carry me through.