Holy Macaroni!! Where does the time go??

I feel that it was not that long ago that I wrote something here - low and behold, I check, and it was two years ago. TWO years ago! I reflect on what was happening in my life when I last wrote, and compare it to now ... in so many ways, little has changed. And in a few ways, much has changed. I feel as if I'm waking from a deep sleep - coming to discoveries and epiphanies that I might have brushed up against in the past, but are slamming home now. Looking back over my 45 years, there have been difficult years that stand out for their own reasons. Years where it seems there's been more struggle and anguish than symphony and roses. I can identify 2 such times - one being my 2nd year of teaching and one being my last year of teaching in Manitoba. One for personal difficulty, one for professional challenge. There were a couple of blips on the radar screen since then, but nothing that quite compared to it ... until now. From about Sept. 2007 through to ... oh, June 25th 2009, things have been one blow after another. It is like every facet of who I am has been impacted. Including health. This time, I came close to death more times than I want to think upon ... So, since the end of the surgery (that was on June 25), I now have to pull on my boots and dive in to this mess of a life of mine. I need to peel back the layers and seek out what was good, what I want to keep, and discard the rest. A massive "house-cleaning" of sorts. I realized the other day that it has been 23 years since I finished university. I am standing on the brink of all that was, and all that is to come. I have accomplished little (on paper and in my bank account) but have wisdom and knowledge beyond I even realize. All I know right now is that in 23 years time, I do NOT want to be writing the same kind of entry. In 23 years, at the age of 68, I want to look back upon this point in my life, wrap my arms around it and love how it launched me into a whole new life. All I have done has brought me to this point ... let it not be in vain! So ... I am planting the flag in this moment. I am saying that what is to come will not continue the path of where I've been. "If you do what you've always done, you'll get what you've always got." Time for something new - risk, change, choose something different. And in the process, choose Life!!

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