Ode to a Garbage Can

I apologize if this is too much information, but nearly every day of my adult life, I have hoisted one foot up onto my bathroom vanity in order to apply body lotion to that leg. Then I repeat with the other leg. In recent years, I have sometimes wondered, “How old will I be when I can no longer hike my foot up there?”

Then it happened.

It didn’t play out like expected. Hoisting my foot up onto the vanity is not the issue. It’s putting all my weight on the other ankle that suddenly became a problem. My ankle rebelled, like it’s been doing on the stairs off and on lately. Thankfully, I didn’t collapse. But I gained new insight, something along the lines of, “Oh. So THIS is how the cookie crumbles.” It reminds me of what they say about the elderly and broken hips, how most of the time it’s not that a person falls and breaks a hip. It’s that their hip breaks and they fall.

Now bear with me while I make an extremely self-deprecating comparison.

How many years would you expect to get out of a standard garbage can? As I carried ours from the curb back to the box where it hangs out between its weekly outings, it occurred to me that this olive-green, metal can is getting up there in years. I don’t know how many, exactly. But I know we bought it new when we lived in Texas, so probably around 1978.

Forty-five years later, we’re still using that can. Sure, the handle came off once and Hubby wired it back on. That wire, though somewhat rusted, has held. For several years when we lived in the country and burned our trash, the can got used instead to hold dog food, a slightly loftier purpose.

The can has a few dents and dings, a few spots without paint and yes, some rust. But it’s doing its job just fine. Never asks for glory or gratitude. Never complains about smells, cold, or heat. Never made a fuss that summer I threw out a raw turkey liver and later found the can crawling with maggots that had to be bleached out of its interior. (Speaking of too much information.)

Back to my weak ankle. Like our trash can, my body is aging and breaking down. Dings and dents. Lumps and bumps.

Unlike our trash can, my body lets me know when it’s not happy and I, in turn, pass that information along to hubby because I know how he appreciates my whining.

Don’t get me wrong. My body is immeasurably more valuable than my trash can. Irreplaceable, even, at least for now. And although that old can could easily outlive me, eventually it will be nothing but crumbs of rust blown around by the wind. By that time, I’ll have received a brand-new body that my Bible tells me will never deteriorate, weaken, or die (check out I Corinthians 15:35-58).

While I wait for that day, it wouldn’t hurt to become more like my trash can. How great would it be to adopt the mindset that I’m here to play my assigned part with endurance and consistency, without expecting glory or gratitude, without complaint, and without envying someone else’s more important role? While I’m at it, how much healthier would it be to choose contentment when my body can’t do everything it used to do or no longer looks as fine as it once did? That is, after all, the natural order of everything.

In the grand scheme, “She did her job just fine” might not be such a bad epitaph.

(Not my trash can. Ours, at 45 years, is actually in much better shape.)