I’m pretty sure my dog doesn’t possess as extensive a vocabulary as I credit her with. Still, I could swear Muňeca just rolled dejected, puppy-sad eyes at me in a look that said, What kind of a day is this when a girl can’t even get in one decent walk, between the cold and the rain and the wind?

I shot her back a cocked-eyebrow look of my own that said, “Just be glad we don’t live in Montana. Missoulans are trudging through ten inches of snow about now.”

Funny thing is, this damp and cloudy day didn’t leave me feeling drained and depressed and wanting to crawl back into bed. There was certainly a time in my life when it would have.

This is not because everything is peachy-keen in my little corner of Texas, either. I don’t have close friends nearby. Nice, younger neighbors, but no long-term confidants. I haven’t set aside enough to ensure my future well-being should an economic ripple interrupt the delivery of monthly Social Security checks. And people I love and thought I could trust inexplicably turned on me after my husband passed away last December.

Then, all last week I wasn’t feeling so hot. But I weathered it with prayer, serenely meditating my way through a string of housebound days that I feared might herald a new normal. I am, after all, approaching a birthday that I can hardly believe has snuck up on me, when I actually—usually—feel decades younger than the number would suggest.

So today the sage’s voice that hunkers down in the left half of my brain whispers to its opposing side, she actually has acquired a little wisdom in the autumn of her life. The wisdom to not beat my head against the brick wall of things over which I have no control. The understanding that a satisfactory life requires my greatest efforts, but also my greatest faith in an entity I cannot see or touch. And the knowledge that none of this rests in my ability to conquer the world but in the omnipotence of a Creator God, who hears my plaints but knows better than I how to resolve them.

Patience. Did I mention that older me is more patient, too? It’s not a trait I taught myself. It came from an active relationship with that Creator. Can’t explain how all of this works because I’m hobbled by the limits of human intelligence. But I can guarantee a good result once the practice of daily contact with Him is established. 

Another funny thing? For the first twenty years of my adulthood, I wouldn’t have made that claim. Probably would have laughed at it. Did laugh at it. I’m not laughing any longer. But I am smiling. Even on a dreary, cold, rainy, windy day.