I love these 30 minutes or so where I sit listening to some lofi sounds and put some thoughts to Keyboard. It mostly happens on Sunday afternoons. The house is silent because the kids are out milking what’s left of the weekend before school starts on Monday, and wife is indulging in her customary Sunday afternoon nap. There’s a peace that seems to engulf me on these afternoons, inspiring the periodic unleashment of these random thoughts.
I have a friend. The kind you might be familiar with. His life seems to have been somehow figured out from quite an early age. He found his dream career early and stuck to it, climbing the ladder at a healthy pace. He met a beautiful young lady at just the right time, fell in Love, married her at a beautiful Church wedding, and is now blessed with kids, living a fairly good life in a Mortgaged suburban House in a gated community, an SUV and a European saloon car in the parking lot. He’s got good decent enough hobbies and a loving circle of friends and family. I bet you are waiting for me to say BUT. I’ll be honest, I haven’t found the BUT yet. I’ve envied him many a time, as I tried to figure my life out, often in futility.
Here’s the thing, not all of us get to tick off all the boxes above like my buddy. We will make wrong moves, have to roll life back once in a while, we will make compromises here and there, sacrifice a thing or two and sustain bruises along the way. What does that make the rest of us? Are we lesser beings? Were we born on the wrong hour of the night? Doesn’t the Bible say of all of us, “Before I formed you in the womb I knew you, before you were born I set you apart“, or does that only apply to the chosen few?
I’ve battled with comparison for a decent chunk of my adult life. I’ve tried to keep up with the joneses, often to my own frustration. Then I met someone, actually a couple of people, who, despite their lives having taken a wrong turn or two here and there, had found a semblance of normalcy and tranquility, embracing the lemons that life had fed them, and landed on their feet feeling quite good. They inspired me to embrace my journey, to make peace with my mistakes, and lean even harder on to the path that God has chosen for me.
I’m reminded of two interesting Chaps. One was called Joseph, he of the coat of many colors fame. Let’s face it, the guy had it rough on his way to his destiny. The other one was Jacob, his Dad. I mean this guy. Talk about a dramatic life. Yet he went ahead and fathered God’s chosen people. Abraham, David…..Jesus. It’s a pretty long list of biblical fellows who didn’t tick off the traditional boxes of ‘Success’, but still, by God’s grace found their place on this earth, and became great historical figures.
I don’t have it all figured out, but when I finally found the courage to look inward and upward, making peace with my life’s trajectory, something happened. A transformation of the mind if I may so boldly state. And through this process, it’s like God finally found his canvas for my life and started painting, and the pieces started falling into place. It’s been amazing to say the least.
