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Where do the years go?

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Throughout my life, even in childhood, I was fascinated by time travel.

I watched any movie or TV show associated with the topic. From H.G. Wells “The Time Machine” to the series The Time Tunnel, a short-lived series that I watched in reruns growing up. Even “Fantasy Island” or “Sliders” would occasionally have a show that crossed into history that impacted their story lines.

While these were all a pleasant diversion in my childhood, thinking of being able to augment time in the past or visit the future was always an adventure of hope in my mind.

Changing little things in our life that we did wrong. How would that impact our world today.

We avoided an accident, we bought a winning lottery ticket. We avoided a heartache in our love life.

Would our life be better. Who else would our tweaks impact. Could we go back and save a love one’s life?

So many times, have I imagined making such changes.

I recently had the opportunity to look into faces of people I have known through much of my life.

As I stood next to each, shook and how-deed making small talk, I thought back upon the early natures of our friendships. Where we were then and where we are now. How God had moved our lives in different directions. How we once saw each other with regularity now decades later, if once or twice a year comes to pass, it is unusual. While I often long for those days of old in my mind, we have all moved to different places in life. The years are filled with facial lines, life experiences that have built character, deepened our faith stories, changed our lives and made us different people. Do we still care for one another as we once did?

I would say somewhere within our soul, the once existing connections remain allowing us to find the moments of camaraderie and friendship again as we pass the time of day.

I think about how time has moved so swiftly. Lives have flown through decades, many called home, many others remain and grow where they have set roots.

Is looking back at our past good thing or a bad thing? Is dreaming of time travel to impact the past a good fantasy? Should we be looking back or staring into the future?

I think when you stand in a particular place in life, whether your spend your time looking forward or looking back depends upon your own life. If you have created a wonderful life, raised a family and they are successfully traversing the world, you do tend to focus forward with one’s gaze.

If you are a creator, then you also tend to have a forward outlook seeking that next opportunity to make something new. You keep trying, hoping some invention or idea with bless the future and the world.

If the circumstances have placed you elsewhere in life and you find the future to be less interesting, you spend time looking back.

You cherish the people and the times now behind you. You relish the good times and those who were part of your life. Does looking back uplift you? Do you feel more able to face the day and walk through all that is coming at you?

If the answer is yes, then, whether you look backwards or forwards the exercise is productive for you and thus all you touch as long as you do not forget to live today, in the moment that God is giving you.

You have life in your hands. Every moment, everyday, you can make a difference. Even in the greatest disadvantages, you can impact people for the greater good of us all.

Looking in the past, hoping for the future, dreaming of a day that we know our efforts impacted the world and all those around us for good. That’s my hope for you and for me. As we travel through time, let’s enjoy the ride, we only get one turn on the ride.

Don’t miss your window

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You know everything we do in life has a period when it is best by.

Marriage, children, working life, education and so many other of the things we do, are often set best in certain periods of our lives.

I have missed a lot of windows in my life, I will be the first to admit. Some of those misses, as time has passed have brought regrets and sadness. But life comes and goes as we plan. Living it at the moment in time when we are existing is probably the best path for all of us.

I recently spent the day doing what my folks have done for generations. Possibly not to the annual extent that we once practiced, since that meant we had something to eat all the year long.

That was harvesting, canning and freezing greens of various types.

I have always loved eating greens with a bit of fatback for seasoning and a piece of cornbread on the side. A meal is made of them.

I will have to admit my efforts were not as efficient as they could have been and I lost a lot of greens simply due to timing.

I didn’t have the time needed to press through all the greens, cook and process immediately. Thus, I lost several pounds of greens to turning and wilting over the subsequent days since the cutting.

Despite the delay, I am only one person, so there is only so much that can be accomplished while trying to keep life afloat.

But I will know next time to make sure I have adequate time to dedicate to the effort.

When I was little, the process was swifter, there were many hands, making the work lighter.

The cooking and processing were done as they came straight from the garden with no time to spare.

I can still see my grandmother’s iron pots lined up on tripods above a burning fire in the yard as each crop was processed for canning.

Even though it was several days of work, each crop went fast, because everyone focused their efforts on that and filled the root cellar for months to come with that vegetable. Then they moved on to the next one.

You couldn’t wait or you’d miss the window of goodness. Whether it was beans, corn, greens, beets or any other crop, they got our full attention.

So, for everything we pursue in life there is a window of goodness – when it is the best time for that life experience to come to pass. Now that doesn’t mean we can’t go to college in our eighties. I have known several people who accomplished degrees at that point in life. That also doesn’t mean we can’t get married, have children later in life, if biologically possible, although it does often require more energy than afforded to keep up with the responsibilities associated.

As it is said to everything there is a season, and as I worked through my step back into the process of canning and freezing greens, it reminded me, we must make the time to do what is needed when its required or we will loose part of our crop.

The same is true in life. We must make the time to do what we want during the window when everything is good for that purpose. Don’t miss your windows in life, once they are closed and painted shut, it’s hard to get them open again as time goes along.

Tarry a little longer

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I recently sat in the pew for a funeral listening to the preachers and speakers as they focused on the amazing life of a friend, colleague and co-author – the late Ringgold Mayor Joe Barger.

We spent nearly a year working weekly creating his autobiography – Testing the Metal of Life.

One line from the speakers really stuck with me shared by speaker Gary Knowles – he closed with the line tarry a little longer, when speaking about how he regretted not spending a little more time with the deceased when he passed by seeing him working out in his yard.

That stuck with me – everyday our lives take us by people’s houses. We see folks on the street, in the store or around town. Sometimes its people we see often, sometimes its an unusual crossing of paths.

What do you do? Do you wave and keep going? Do you stop and make small talk? Do you really greet an old friend and spend some time, maybe ask them to join you for lunch or coffee?

A few minutes can tell us a lot about other people’s circumstances. With the seasons of life, people move into and out of our lives and we lose touch.

They stay with us in mind as we last left them. As the years pass we picture them as we last saw them, so we can sometimes be surprised by what we find if they pop up unexpected.

Do or did they mean something in your life?

Are they older? Are they your age?

If you think about it, we all have people in our lives of all ages, from all phases, that we wish we could have spent a few more minutes with, when they were gone.

Just a few more words, another afternoon fishing, a ballgame, a dance, time around the kitchen table sharing stories, a walk in the woods, just sitting and not saying anything could have meant the world to any of us when we look down into their closed eyes in a casket.

In short, the message to all of us is clear, if someone’s means something to you, don’t hurry, don’t rush, just tarry a little longer. You never know when it might be the last time you see them.

What was in the wind?

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It flew by me so fast I didn’t see it.

It was certainly a surprise that the wind would carry something so
fast.

But the actuality is that wind is simply a reflection of what we all
see with each passing day as we walk in front of the looking glass.

One day, we are a small child busy rushing to go outside and play.

Before we turn around, we are off to college, sometimes paying more
attention to what’s in the looking glass in hopes we might catch
someone else’s eye.

Then perhaps marriage and children and the glass reflects the wider
view to accommodate the added numbers.

As the gales come and go, we weather the storms of life.

The wind keeps blowing touching upon our hair bringing it touches of
gray and circling our mid-drift leaving a few pounds we did not want
left behind.

One day, we look around and wonder where it all went – the years,
the friends, the children. We see wind cross the glass and there
stands someone who we barely know. Perhaps its our father or mother,
or one of our grands looking back out at us.

The winds of time have passed our face so many times, the skin sags
downward.

No matter how much we pull upon it, we are unable to take away the
wind’s impact.

Some of us even see our hair flying along with the stream as it
let’s go from the strain of the force.

But no matter how fast it seems the wind pushes upon the streams of
our life, we are ultimately riding a similar breeze as everyone who
has come before and millions who walk along beside us.

We may guide how we accept the blowing winds, take them in stride and
realize that while the looking glass may not always reflect what we
desire, within our own head, we are who we always desired to be.

Of course realizing, that no one else has to live within our looking
glass image. When we accept that, then we can smile back at ourselves
knowing that we our holding strong upon our sails and guiding our
vessel in the direction we hope.

So, what was that, that flew by, just another day, another month,
another year, in the winds of time.

Let us ride them happily, hopefully and graciously towards our
destination beyond the looking glass.

Time’s a wastin’ – do something

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As I walked across the yard this morning the wind whirled around me with a chill that reminded me that today is the first day of fall.

I cannot remember a year thus far in my life that has seemed to fly by like this one has.

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Place and time sometimes matter

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One never knows what God has in store for each day.
I was recently returning from a day of volunteering a couple of hours from home traveling up the interstate only to find myself in slowing traffic which is not out of the ordinary.
What made this late night commute out of the ordinary was the driver in the same lane behind me who did not notice the slowing traffic and catapulted into the rear of my vehicle. Thankfully, he realized in time to veer just enough to take away some of the force and thus I was spared from serious injury, but the vehicle, though yet to be determined, is likely to be totaled.
Just moments before, I had seriously thought about changing lanes to the right to exit in order to avoid being stuck in traffic in case it was more than a slowdown. In looking ahead, I could see that it was just a construction slow down and let that thought pass.
Had I changed lanes; I would not have been hit. I would not be searching endlessly to replace a 17-year-old clean as-a-whistle, well-maintained, low-mileage vehicle on the less-than-ample settlement that the insurance company is likely to pay.
So, did I make the wrong choice? When I disregarded the urge to move over, did I lose my chance of missing this fate? Or had I made the choice could the result have been even worse? Or perhaps was this minimum effect that now requires me find a new vehicle to save me from a breakdown out on a trip later in the year?
These are of course, answers I will never know. Sometimes for some, such a choice leaves other wondering what happened as they deal with circumstances more severe.
Was it meant to happen or was it simply the place and time that mattered? A few moments, a different lane, and another path could be ahead. Is it a path I would have wanted?
Despite what we may face on a given day. We cannot change what has happened. We must simply do our best with the circumstances and ask for God’s guidance in what is next. A light will shine upon the path, though our eyes may not always recognize it immediately, but the way ahead will be brighter. We must have faith.