Far from the truth

I listened to a person tell me today that life had not really worked out like she thought from when she was in her 20s until now (she is in her 50s). She expressed that she had no regrets about how things had turned out, but that her 20s picture of life had been quite different from the way life had actually twisted and turned.

It's probably true for all of us. I know that I had a really, really different picture of what I as a 20-year-old wanted life to be. Plus, a person at 20 thinks that he or she can control one's destiny for the most part. Of course, nothing could be further from the truth. I had no idea my wife and mother would never, ever get along well. I did try to control that on two occasions. I didn't know that I would have only 19 years with my son. His disease was genetically controlled and I never had a chance to control the disease. I didn't know that my wife would have a disease that disabled her for at least a decade of her life. She is only now slowly returning to normal. I definitely tried to control her disease without a wit's worth of success. I didn't know my daughter would go into a tail spin after her brother died and end up on depression medicine and with a diagnosis of bipolarism. She is working through this stage of her life rather perilously. I could only watch and react throughout her experimentation and experiences.

Once a person becomes an adult, life just takes off with seemingly no direction. All I can do is bow in the face of death, bow in the face of disease, bow in the face of another person's experiences. I have great appreciation for people in their 50s because I know that they have seen life's various facets. They have learned to simply live through tough times. People in their 50s are not so arrogant because of life's roller coaster ride. So, I finally bow in the presence of the Maker of life's events, truting that life's big picture makes sense to him and is somehow keeping me on the path that leads home to him.