On bad knees, dry bones, and what I didn’t expect about getting older.
September 8, 2026
by Richard Yung Chung
So … I’ve started watching people stand up.
Not in a sinister way. It’s just that when you preach, you’re facing a whole room of people, and every time we come to a hymn, everybody has to get to their feet. And from where I stand, I can see the whole operation.
The hands going to the armrests. The small preliminary lean. The push. The grimace that people think nobody notices. And the expression … I know this expression very well by now … that says: Why does he make us stand up every single time? Could we not just sit and sing?
And here’s the cruel part. Some of you get up so slowly that by the time you’re upright, the singing is finished and it’s time to sit down again. Up, down, up, down. All that work for nothing.
I feel your pain. I do. I suspect this is a large part of why some people have discovered they can worship perfectly well online, from a chair, where the only reason to stand is a trip to the washroom.
Sooner or later it’s all of us. Achy joints. Bad knees. Hips that file complaints.
In my own family there are seven of us, all past sixty now, and two have already had hip replacements. I fully expect the rest of us to work through the list in due course. I’m second youngest, so my joints are holding up reasonably well — knock wood – but I’m a runner, and runners wear out their knees faster than sensible people do. My turn is coming.
I wasn’t thrilled about that, for a long time. And then something changed my mind entirely.
My mother-in-law had both knees replaced a few years ago.
And when we went to Korea to see her afterward, I could not stop staring. She walked straight. She looked wonderful. And she was – I would swear to this – taller.
So I said, “Sue. Your mother looks fantastic. And she seems taller. Did she grow? At her age?”
And Sue said, “Yes. She got taller after the knee replacements.”
I said, “Really. Knee replacement can do that? It makes you taller
Folks, I want to be honest with you about the state of my soul in that moment.
Because I have always had one small issue with my appearance. Just the one. Everything about me is essentially perfect. I think we can agree, except my height. Two more inches and I’d be complete. Two inches and I’d be, more or less, Brad Pitt.
And here was my mother-in-law, in her later years, having gained height from a routine surgery.
So my immediate, entirely spiritual thought was: I want one.
And if I’m getting one anyway … why stop at ordinary? Put the platinum in. Give me the steel plate. Rebuild me like the Six Million Dollar Man. Bionic knees, two inches taller, and I’ll finally be able to run without complaining.
I have not yet raised this plan with my doctor. I suspect the conversation will be short.
But underneath the joke there’s something that has genuinely surprised me about getting older, and it isn’t what I expected.
I assumed aging would be a slow subtraction. That every year you’d lose a little more, and the honest thing to do was accept the decline gracefully and stop complaining about it.
And there is subtraction. My knees are not what they were.
But I keep watching people get restored. My mother-in-law walked into her seventies straighter than she walked out of her sixties. Two of my siblings move better now than they did five years ago. A hundred and forty thousand Canadians a year get a hip or knee replaced and walk out of the hospital with something they’d already grieved and given up.
Somebody hands you back a thing you were sure you’d lost for good. That happens far more than I ever expected.
I don’t only mean joints. I’ve watched it happen with marriages people had written off, with people who were certain they were finished, with congregations everybody assumed were done. Dry as bones. And then something breathes.
I used to think restoration was a young person’s story … that after a certain age, the arc only points one way. I don’t believe that anymore. I’ve seen too many people put back together in their seventies and eighties, walking straighter than before, taller than they started.
So I’ve stopped assuming that what’s worn out is finished.
And yes, when my knees finally go, I’ll take the surgery. I’ll take the platinum plates if they’re offering.
And I will stand for every single hymn.
Slowly. Grimacing. Possibly finishing after the singing stops.
Richard
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Prior Newsletters from Slow Wisdom :
The Look On My Daughters Face … September st
You and Your Tongue … August 25th
The Secret To My Vegetables … August 18th
Me and My Rabbits … August 11th
The City That Forgot Me … August 4th
The Day Jesus Was Rude … July 28th
My Fifty Dollar Titanic … July 21st
I Shouted At The Prime Minister … July 15th
I Told My Church I Ate Grasshoppers … July 7th
Thankful For The Hospital Food … July 1st
My Goal Was To Finish and Not Die … June 24th
The Wedding Afro … June 17th