Journal

“Yet you do not know what your life will be like tomorrow. You are a vapor that appears for a little while and then vanishes away.” James 4:14 LSB

“God has not been trying an experiment on my faith or love in order to find out their quality. He knew it already. It was I who didn’t. In this trial He makes us occupy the dock, the witness box, and the bench all at once. He always knew that my temple was a house of cards. His only way of making me realize the fact was to knock it down.” — C. S. Lewis, “A Grief Observed”

Until our faith moves from transactional to relational, we will never experience the fullness of the love and care of God.

The last line of the 2010 remake of the movie “True Grit” is much different than the original 1969 version. In the remake, Adult Mattie is recounting what has gone since the completion of her journey with Rooster Cogburn, and in a completely astonishing manner, she utters the words “Time just gets away from us…” as she is walking away from the family cemetery. I was so taken aback that I had to watch it several times, just letting that sink in.

I just turned 62, and those words keep resounding in my head. I have 4 kids, one who is married with a beautiful grandson I get to see quite often, another who is about to be married, and two more who are well-established in this life, and who make me shake my head at how successful they are, despite my best efforts.

I am attempting to be more purposeful these days, with both family AND friends, making sure I don’t have many chances to have regrets. I’m sure I will still have some from time to time, but I’d rather be deliberate in sharing life in a way that builds them up and brings glory to the Lord. Otherwise, time DOES just get away from you…

This is a topic that I know many people have on their minds and hearts on a regular basis. Sadly, we don’t think quite as much about life until we are touched by death. In the last 8 years I’ve lost both a parent and a sibling, and both times I was caught somewhat unawares of how I treated the living until I was confronted with death. This was brought home especially powerfully this last week when a good friend of mine from college passed away somewhat suddenly, at least suddenly to me. What I wasn’t aware of was that even though we were in vague contact through Instagram, when I made the decision to quit socials, I didn’t make a plan or an effort to maintain contact with her or her husband. Random texts that are unplanned do not count, and so I quite literally had no idea that she was close to death several times over the past year. I simply woke up to a text last Monday with her obituary staring me in the face. I attended her funeral on Friday, and it was one of the most gut-wrenching experiences I’ve gone through in some time, especially when I went to hug her husband and nearly broke down in his arms.

Because of this experience, I have determined that I need to take better care of the existing friendships and relationships I have, lest I wake up to an unexpected message that will reveal another level of regret that I can avoid by being more purposeful. That might seem like a lot of people to include in my efforts, but if I take inventory of my available time, how much is spent doing things that don’t have that much worth, either in the present or in the future?

I’ll close this with a simple statement: I have made a large number of friends in this life, and even if I’m not able to reach them, or circumstances dictate I can’t, I walk forward saying that my friends matter to me, and I hope that they all know that. Now it’s up to me to remind them…

“When despair for the world grows in me
and I wake in the night at the least sound
in fear of what my life and my children’s lives may be,
I go and lie down where the wood drake
rests in his beauty on the water, and the great heron feeds. I come into the peace of wild things who do not tax their lives with forethought of grief.  I come into the presence of still water. And I feel above me the day-blind stars waiting with their light. For a time I rest in the grace of the world, and am free.” — Wendell Berry, “The Peace of Wild Things”

I hate the word “blog”. It just sounds so whatever, and it immediately makes me want to move on. So, I thought that an easier way for me to express what I had to put into writing was to call it what it is in some respects – a journal. No, I won’t be posting every day, I just don’t have the time. I don’t think there will be very many/any people reading this, but I’m just getting it out there. It’ll be when I can, and when I have something to say that I’ve been chewing on.

It has been a very long time since I’ve tried to maintain any sort of blog or online writing of any sort, but there are a lot of things that have caused me to want to get things down in writing as it were. So, I am going to take yet another swing at a journal of sorts. I appreciate your indulgence…