It's also a bit of a relief. One day this week I was thinking about our Christmas gathering, and the people who were there, and how much has changed in the past ten years. Seven of my ten grandchildren were here last Sunday, and on Christmas of 2006, only one of the seven had been born--and then, of course, the almost three month old hadn't been born yet either.
Only one of my children was married ten years ago, and now she isn't and the other three are. My mother was still living, and my youngest daughter was home from her sophomore year of college.
None of my children had graduated from college and now three have, and even I have an Associate's degree that I didn't have then.
Not one of the adults in our family has the same job that he or she had that Christmas. Only my husband and I live in the same place, and all of my children have moved more than once. At that time,
I pretty much thought that writing was the last thing I would ever want to do.
I would imagine that at that time, nobody reading this had ever heard of Barack Obama.
So many things both really good, and terribly difficult have happened since that day--most of them I could never have foreseen--nor, do I think, was there anything I could have done to prevent the difficult things. So I'm thinking about all the things that concern me about the next ten years and realizing that that is pretty much a waste of time. I don't have the slightest clue what those ten years will look like.
I've been sitting here for a while since I wrote that last sentence trying to figure out some way to end this post without resorting to something that will not sound platitudinous, and not having any luck. I will, I suppose, go in the next ten years in much the same way that I have gone before, trying to accept whatever comes as coming from the Lord's hands and to be grateful and less selfish and less grouchy and trying to become more like Him in whatever infinitesimally small increments I may manage.
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| I'm pretty sure that if I'm still here in ten years, this will look the same. It looked just like this 10 years ago, except that the dreadful wallpaper has been removed. |
That is a very wise post -- probably ten years ago you couldn't have written it because you didn't understand it. I've been thinking about how, given the way things change constantly, I need to treasure whatever gatherings I have with loved ones, because it will never be exactly This Way again.
ReplyDeleteThat is so true about treasuring the gatherings. It looks like you had a very nice Christmas, too. We had 33 people on Thanksgiving. Only one wasn't related by blood or marriage. I'm wondering if we'll ever have that big a group again.
ReplyDeleteAMDG