Book voices common concerns of older adults

Missy Buchanan sought a book of devotions especially for the frail elderly. Finding none, she wrote her own: “Living With Purpose in a Worn-Out Body: Spiritual Encouragement for Older Adults” (Upper Room, 96 pages, $10).

The lined hands and worn Bible on the book’s cover aren’t those of her mother, Minelle McGlothlin, although they could have been. Advancing arthritis has caused “a disconnect from the (United Methodist) church she loved so much,” her daughter says.

Even before her father died two years ago, Buchanan, 57, was “searching for something that would voice older adults’ frustrations and fears, yet give them encouragement and hope.”

She shared her simple devotions first with her parents, then with others at Montclair Estates Retirement Community in Garland, Texas, where McGlothlin has lived for the last seven of her 92 years.

They grew into the manuscript she sent to Richard Gentzler, who directs the United Methodist Church’s Center on Aging and Older Adults in Nashville, Tenn. He passed it on to Upper Room Books, publishing arm of a Nashville-based global Christian ministry dating back to the 1930s.

The result is a slim paperback with 41 meditations set in easy-to-read type. Each treats a common concern of aging adults, like medicine bottles, breathing treatments, the difficulty of getting a good night’s sleep, the generational table-turning that makes a child into a caregiver.

It then segues gently into a brief prayer followed by on-point quotes from Old Testament Psalms and New Testament writings, testifying how well the author knows her own Bible.

Buchanan says in the book’s dedication that she learns much from other Montclair residents who have “invited me to share in the unvarnished truth of their daily struggles and joys.”

“In writing the book, I realized how important it is to listen to what the elderly say about life, to honor those feelings and then remind them of God’s faithfulness and care,” she says.

And in the book she writes: “Though my hands fumble, I will lift them up in praise. … Jesus welcomes those who spill food in their laps.”