Twenty-seven days left. Until another page turns in God’s book where my years are numbered and until another candle is placed on the cake down here where we make wishes and carelessly blow through the pages of our lives. As you know from my last post, last week we heard the books slam abruptly closed on two young lives. And it made me stop and consider things.
In twenty-seven days plus another three hundred and sixty-five, I shall turn thirty. And I wonder where I shall be on that day. Better yet, who I shall be. There have been times in my life when I hoped to live in a certain neighborhood or reach a certain landmark achievement by the time I was thirty. More than one bathroom. Hardwood floors. Maybe have a book on the coffee table that I had written and have friends around the table who know me well enough that they didn’t have to read it to understand it, but would read it anyway because they’re just good friends like that. Those early hopes were penciled on the back of grocery lists that had me in the diaper aisle and in toddler departments; and many years have passed since then.
I met most of those goals early. At the age of 25, we moved into a lovely sprawling mountain home (more on that here) that indeed had bathroomS and wood floors. I discovered with maturity that some of the things worth having sometimes require the giving up of other things, hopefully things that will in time prove worth giving up. I completed both my first published book and my first professional CD earlier this year. Healthy children, deepening marriage affection (the friends have been harder to come by). I have been blessed.
Still I find myself stepping into September with a solemn awareness of the fleetingness of life. And of things, even books and CDs. I wonder where the balance is between changing the world and finding contentedness in my own corner of it. Between a driving purpose and the alternate routes that allow for sunsets and hand-holding and moments that hold no other purpose than to deliver that warm joy, no matter how fleeting it may be.
I have always pushed and pressed and fought Today for pieces of Tomorrow. Always checking lists, adjusting projectories, fine-tuning my vision statements and personal missions. But am I living so far in Tomorrow that I never really take hold of Today? In the book, The Shack, William Young subtly suggests a profound concept when he states that Jesus lives neither in Yesterday nor in Tomorrow, but only in Today. That should change the way I process my reality. Perhaps it is.
As I sit here and type, I hear the clock downstairs tick, tick, ticking my life away. As the sun rises in the sky and the wind blows in cooler autumn breezes, I cannot deny the passing of time. The turning of the pages. And with the Thirty Mile-marker on the horizon, I wonder what my hopes and goals should be at this point. Where do I want to be? Who am I supposed to be?
I am taking suggestions.
(I looked for a profound verse from Ecclesiastes for this spot, but this was the best I could come up with. Not the most profound or the most encouraging.)
7 Go, eat your food with gladness, and drink your wine with a joyful heart, for it is now that God favors what you do. 8 Always be clothed in white, and always anoint your head with oil. 9 Enjoy life with your wife, whom you love, all the days of this meaningless life that God has given you under the sun— all your meaningless days. For this is your lot in life and in your toilsome labor under the sun. 10Whatever your hand finds to do, do it with all your might, for in the grave, where you are going, there is neither working nor planning nor knowledge nor wisdom. Ecclessiastes 9: 7-10