Don’t shy away from change

What happens when you really stop to count your blessings, your opportunities, your values in terms of time and what you may hope or dream of accomplishing?

What happens, in short, when you come face to face with your own mortality and limits — not in a negative way, but in a way that is productive ?

It can happen with a serious illness, or an unknown illness of indeterminate severity. It can happen with an accident, where one has a close call. It can even happen when facing the death of a loved one.

This happened in our family recently, with both the loss of a mother-in-law and the illness of the love of my life. The results were yet another (and these things to tend to be periodical, not once and for all) reassessment of where we are going, where we want to be, and are we following the path most conducive to making this one time journey all it can be ?

Remember the Tim McGraw song, the one about the bull named Fu Manchu ? The one which speaks of climbing a rocky mountain, going sky diving, or whatever makes one feel most alive ? Only one of the three appeals to me, but we all have our own lists.

Someone once wisely said “This is your life, not a dress rehearsal.” Someone else, and I’m fairly sure it was John Lennon, once said “Life is what happens while you are busy making other plans.”

How does this impact you? Are there places you would like to go, things you would like to try, before you have finished this ride?

Next summer, we will be going to California on a business trip but combining it with an extended vacation. I’ve always been up for confidently trying any water sport that came along, but never been anywhere that surfing was possible. I figured that, once 50 had passed, I was surely too old to try it.

Then I heard the story about the 60-year-old woman who tried, for the first time, stand-up riding behind a powerboat. So I thought — well, why not? So what if you wipe out?

A place you might like to visit — well, the Winter Olympics will be held in the eminently reachable city of Vancouver, BC. It isn’t beyond belief that one could make it to Vancouver, for that event.

There are only so many days in your life journey, and the chances which you pass up, may not come around again. Major life shakeups are not always bad, if they bring us face to face with opportunities we might have otherwise missed.

Clyde Davis is pastor of First Presbyterian Church in Portales and a college instructor. He can be contacted at:

[email protected]