What Life Isn’t

The older I get, the more I realize I know more about what life isn’t than what it is. Perhaps that’s because age better defines limitations. With youth, there seem to be endless choices—even ones we make for “somewhere down the road.” Perhaps after age fifty, we know we’re already well down that road and if by now we haven’t done some of what we thought we might do, we’re not likely to do it.

I know my life wasn’t created for my own happiness. Does God want His children happy? Of course—in between those times when we’re not, when we’re leaning on Him, learning, growing, having our eyes turned to Him or toward someone else.

I also know hope isn’t something to be treated lightly. It’s a fragile thing, one that we all need on the big scale (the hope of Heaven, for example) but sometimes hope can be a tool used against our current wellbeing. I can hope for something but if that’s all I do, the days without what I hope for will only seem longer. For example, I hope for a cure for Fragile X (the disorder my son suffers) but if I focused only on that, these fifteen years I’ve been hoping for it so far might have left me soured by now. So I hope loosely in the “now” but ultimately in the sure cure he’ll have in heaven.

Sometimes the life we have isn’t a perfect match for our surroundings – you might be a perfect tree for your climate but you may not be planted in the right soil. Craggy, sandy, overused . . . the tree can still grow, but will it thrive? We don’t always feel like we fit where God has placed us. Sometimes we can grow into it, but sometimes we’re there for a purpose we can’t easily understand. Sometimes we only understand it in retrospect.

About those dreams of life. Even fulfilled dreams aren’t always what we really need, and sometimes nothaving them filled is the right thing for us. I recently went to see the movie “Moneyball” with my son and husband, and its depiction of how players are used or traded made me feel like the publishing world, at least in comparison, is the most secure business on earth—a fact anyone in the business regularly doubts. But it made me glad my husband’s youthful dreams of playing baseball professionally never came to be.

And as much as most people want every day life to be deep, relationally defined and community-oriented, much of life is superficial. We want to recognize and be drawn to beauty on the inside but our first impression is normally on what’s outside. We want to look deeper, and if given the chance we’re usually rewarded. But I think it’s age that levels things out for us and those around us, so we more readily develop an eye for what’s underneath.

Life isn’t easy, but we knew that from our first, crying breath, didn’t we? However, even though the highs and lows might be more memorable, the real stuff of life is found in moments like this. When we’re just sitting, recognizing our own attitude for what it is: generally good or generally bad. Can we change from a generally bad one to a generally good one? I don’t know. Some say we’re born with our basic personalities already in place, pessimist or optimist, melancholy or cheerful. I do know we can train our actions, though, and when they’re generally good, generally good feelings follow.

I also know this: whatever state we’re in won’t last forever. The good news is if we’re in an unhappy season, this too shall pass. The bad news, of course, is the same can be said if we’re in a happy season . . .

So with that in mind, here’s to a steady-as-you-go kind of day!

I’ll leave you today with a song about the stuff of life from one of my favorite Christian artists: