A Brief Musing for a New Year

It is frightening how quickly and how much we change as we journey through life.  Sometimes we look in the mirror only to hesitate and wonder, "Who is this?"  or ask "Where did I go?"  We can forget who we are, because sometimes we still think we are who we were.

In my own life, I have to recognize my changes, both dramatic and small.  The only way to be comfortable with who you are is to know who you are and to recognize the journey that has brought you to that point - the good and the bad.

For example, when I was in high school and my parents divorced, I used to think that if I was in a car wreck going to visit one of them, that it was their fault.  Even if I was the one who ran a red light or pulled in front of a garbage truck and was technically at fault, I thought that it wasn't my fault.  The blame rested on the divorce.

I thought that for years.

Then I realized that there were plenty of other events in life that I could use as 'starting points' for all my troubles.  It took some processing to realize that there were just as many starting points for troubles as there were for joys.  If I had accepted that date then I might not have met this person.  Things like that.

We come a long way in the short span of our lives.  We fail to recognize it all too often.  We grow.  We grope in the darkness, and from time to time we find one another.

So here it is a new year.  Sorry.  A New Year.  I wonder where I will go, who I will meet, what I will and won't do.  I look forward to becoming more of who I am and I look forward to jettisoning that which no longer defines me and that by which I am no longer defined.

You, dear readers, are a part of that, too.
Let us grow together.

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