The Decade Challenge

Ten years ago, I was a recent Divinity School graduate who was working her dream job and learning the ropes of the vocational ministry career that she thought would be her life’s work. I was living with an 85-year-old widow named Mary who had more energy than me, and we often ate tomato soup and grilled cheese sandwiches together for supper. I spent many nights either bundled up in my Snuggie or in full-body flannel pajamas because Mary kept the house so cold, and I binge-watched “Touched By An Angel” on the Hallmark Channel before binge- watching became a popular thing.

Fast forward a decade and I am sitting at my desk at school, surrounded by Hanukkah, Kwanzaa, and Christmas books. I have just come in from car-rider duty where I waved and smiled enthusiastically at my car-rider parents whom I feel a strange connection with. I spent the middle of my day teaching about Beethoven and the aforementioned Hanukkah, but I began and ended my day with the Gingerbread Man. What a cute yet unlovable character. Is it bad that I’m glad that he gets eaten by the fox? Or that I think it’s funny when my students get so dizzy that they look drunk while spinning like a dreidel?

[Selah]

If I’ve learned anything in ten years, then I’ve learned that it’s impossible to know what life will look like in ten years. Shoot! It’s impossible to know what life will look like tomorrow. We can make plans. We can make predictions. But the twists and turns of life’s journey are as difficult to project as the those of a country road with no reflectors, late at night, the first time you’ve driven it. And to make things more difficult, you never know when a deer of a situation will happen to you or when you will make a user-error and drive yourself right off the road.

[Selah]

“Therefore do not worry about tomorrow, for tomorrow will worry about itself. Each day has enough trouble of its own.” (Matthew 6:34)

I am trying. I am trying to live each moment to the fullest. I am trying to cherish where I am as I am here and not to wish away my present by wishing for a future that I don’t even know how to wish for. If life were left up to me, then it would be pretty boring, because I can’t even begin to imagine the things the Great Artist Creator has yet to create. Some of life’s greatest blessings come unexpectedly. Some of God’s best creations are those that are formed from the dust and rubble of our mistakes…or of the crap that happens to us despite our best regards.

[Selah]

“Do not be anxious about anything, but in every situation, by prayer and petition, with thanksgiving, present your requests to God. And the peace of God, which transcends all understanding, will guard your hearts and your minds in Christ Jesus.” (Philippians 4:6-7)

Peace, friends, peace. And dreidels and Snuggies and Gingerbread Men and binge-watching your favorite shows. Today…and ten years from now…and forevermore.

[Selah]