I have been privileged to experience every important phase of a life and to know that I have been there. In retrospect, I have probably been fortunate that somehow I knew to live in the moment, even though that phrase wasn't part of our vernacular when I started many, many years ago. That I traveled that path with that focus in mind -- the moment -- must be a credit to my parents, because a child would never figure it out alone. At the same time, they never neglected to teach me to look past this moment and be prepared for the next. My forever thanks, Mom and Dad.
My last journey. I hope it's not a short trip. I would like it to last 10 or 15 years. That might be just enough for me to learn what it is to be here, in this place and time, too. I would love that.
I realize there's a blessing happening right now because both LDR and I are starting this journey together. We are alone, now, and our only responsibility is to each other -- just as it was when we first started out.
We have been privileged to know the love of our parents and to be able to care for them until the end of their lives. Our beloved son is now gone, too, gently relinquished to the hands of God after 29 years of intense love and life in which he grew up and became a man. Our beloved daughter has chosen a difficult life with her family as missionaries in a land where the comforts of life they have been accustomed to are missing, where the culture and language clash with their American-tuned ears. We have been blessed to watch them meet the challenges of their path and to see for ourselves that they are capable.
So LDR and I start out this last journey alone, with no one who needs special care, no one who is depending on us to be able, to be there. We can provide that special care and devotion to each other. We can experience this journey together, focusing on the other. Some day, only one of us will be left, but for now, we are mightly blessed.
For me, for all that has come before, I can say:
- I went where I wanted to go. I experienced what I wanted to experience. Life did not cheat me.
- I engaged and fully knew what it meant.
- I learned as I went along.
- My faith is still strong. I am running the race. I am satisfied and have no regrets.
I have learned that I am greedy for life. I want to go see, to feel, to know who is in the same place with me at the time.
I am looking forward with eagerness -- and backward with gratefulness -- with only a little reluctance to leave behind the journeys of the past.
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