Do our minds seem to wear down as we age only because we know too much?
 
That’s what at least some research seems to say: Our brains become increasingly sluggish not because they’re deteriorating, but because we’re packing ‘em so full of experience and information.
 
So said authors Wayne D. Gray and Thomas Hills almost a decade ago in an article entitled “Does Cognition Deteriorate With Age or Is It Enhanced by Experience?” -- a review, apparently, of a landmark book entitled The Myth of Cognitive Decline.
 
At least I think that’s what Gray and Hills are saying when they claim that “our poorer memory for names as we age, over the last several decades at least, is a result of the massive cultural proliferation of novel names alongside the increasing number of names experienced over a lifetime.”
 
Right. We forget Mary’s name because of the proliferation of Kukulas and Thiagos and Zelias. 
 
“Pretty much any cognitive theory with which we are familiar would have to predict that the more things you have in memory the longer will be your search time,” write Gray and Hills. They quote Myth: “’In information theoretic terms…. a measure of processing speed that ignores information load is meaningless.’”
 
Is that kind of like our Pastor Joe says, that all the information is still there in our brains – it’s just that the librarians in charge of retrieving it are slowing down? (To which I would add: These librarians store all this information in First In, First Out [FIFO] order, rather than Last In, First Out [LIFO] order, which is why we can remember what we were doing on July 4, 1959, but don’t have a clue what we had for lunch yesterday.)
 
This fuzzy old brain of mine may be too information-packed to adequately decode ultra-smart academic language like this:
 
“Many things covary as we grow up and grow older,” they write, “and, just as in the nature versus nurture debate over childhood development, a rush to judgment obscures and confuses the search for mechanisms and for the achievement of scientific, as well as personal, understanding of the changes that we all pass through.” 
 
I think that means something along the lines of this: “Old people are encyclopedic in their knowledge rather than deteriorating mentally – so let’s not judge or disrespect them or toss them aside because they don’t seem to be as smart as we younger folks. Really, they’re practically geniuses.”
 
But you know what? These thoroughly educated researchers are missing the point. We are not valuable because of what we know. We are valuable because we are the Creator’s handiwork, because He loved us enough to die for us, and because He has commanded us to love others as we love ourselves and to care for widows in their affliction. 

Of course, such commands will only be embraced by His children – that is, the born-again who have repented and trusted in Jesus. So perhaps it’s no surprise that, in an attempt to make us act godly without bringing God into the picture, we see the world’s experts building elaborate Rube Goldberg patches and workarounds  for issues that are only problematic for those on the wrong side of the narrow gate.

Here's the truth: As the 2nd law of thermodynamics predicts, our aging brains are wearing out. But that does not decrease our value one iota in the eyes of our Creator. And His are the only eyes that matter.

Over the years, I've heard many elderly women worry aloud that they'll never again have friends like those of their younger years. And indeed, sometimes that's the case. But oh, there are some wonderful exceptions--friendships that develop among those who share themselves with complete honesty because they are no longer constrained by pride, and because they have in common the only thing that really matters in this life: the Lord God Himself. This is the sort of friendship the protagonist of The Song of Sadie Sparrow enjoyed in her last days on this earth. Here's a sneak preview:
           
Five days later, Eva slipped quietly into eternity. She had died of “natural causes,” Nurse Char told Sadie, whispering this bit of knowledge as if she’d revealed some top-secret information that would certainly lead to a law suit by Eva’s family if they found out that Char had spilled the beans. As if Eva’s four daughters, now residing in upscale towns in Washington and Vermont and upstate New York, would give a second thought to anything connected with their mother.
           
Eva had, in fact, died just as she had lived since the year she turned fifty: alone. That’s when her girls had left home, she had told Sadie, all within one calendar year, heading off to the coasts to find husbands for themselves and raise children of their own. It was the same year that Eva’s husband, a venerated English professor at the University of Wisconsin-Milwaukee, had left her for a pretty young student whose passion for nineteenth century British literature matched his own.
           
Eva had been awarded their house in the subsequent divorce—a big old stucco bungalow just north of the university, she’d told Sadie. It had lots of crown molding and built-ins and plenty of charm. But apparently that charm was lost on her girls, because they’d rarely visited even before being tied down by their families. So Eva had given herself wholeheartedly to volunteering at and through her church, zeroing in on hospice work early on in a show of solidarity with others whose lives were also ending. It was, in fact, a fellow hospice volunteer who had helped her find and settle into The Hickories once not even a walker could see her safely about the house.
           
Sadie spent much of the day following Eva’s death recalling the conversations they had had about this life, with all its joys and sorrows and disappointments. Somehow sharing those things—especially the disappointments—made everything feel all right again. That was just life, they had agreed time and time again, and a good thing because they were citizens of a better country, an eternal home, and if things had been wonderful on earth they might have resisted going there.
           
“Friends will be there I have loved long ago,” Sadie warbled. “Joy like a river around me will flow!”
           
As long as she was able to focus on these things, she felt strangely peaceful about this loss. Oh, of course she’d miss Eva. Beulah and Eva would probably prove to be her last real friends on this earth. It was just too difficult to find true soulmates in a nursing home, where so many residents were slipping into either dementia or complete self-centeredness, with every personality flaw magnified many times over.  
           
“Just to be there and to look on His face,” she sang out with gusto, “will through the ages be glory for me!”
           
Knowing that Eva would never suffer again was such a comfort. And Sadie no longer had to worry about being the one to go off into paradise first, leaving poor Eva abandoned once again.
           
All in all, it should have been a satisfying resolution to her friend’s life story, with Sadie simply feeling honored to have spent its finale with her.

--From The Song of Sadie Sparrow, pages 293-294