365 Days

 

365 Days

By John W. Vander Velden

 

I had a birthday this week and began the last 365 days of my sixth decade. I guess it feels a bit strange to think about the year in that context, but sometimes my mind takes me down twisted roads. Even as my years seem to stack up like cordwood, my memory has not abandoned me...yet. And so, even as I type these words, I remember a young man, a very young man, in New Prairie High School who could not even imagine the place I find myself today. Truthfully I am not certain that seventeen or eighteen year old expected his bones to rattle along into what he felt would be old age...or from his view...really old age.

Yet here I find myself nearing the end on another decade, grateful to be among those “still standing”. I consider the journey I have traveled, not distance on the map, but an internal distance unmeasurable by any tool. It has been an important portion of a lifetime, and I have witnessed many unexpected things. Yes, I was glued to the TV when Neil Armstrong took his first steps on the moon, and I have witness other moments, some not nearly as impressive but profound all the same. Earthquake ravaged Anchorage. A president resigning in his shame. Riots in the streets of LA.

Compared to these things my life has been quiet. But even quiet existences face cataclysmic events that my teenage self would never believe survivable. For I, like everyone, that lives long enough, have been forced to suffer through what we, in our youth would have considered unendurable.

Some might believe I have lived a charmed life. And I will admit there are many others that have been forced to bare far greater pains than this man, yet I would not describe my life as some fairy tale existence. For among the times of great joy and unbelievable achievements, I too have dealt with loss, with illness, with many, many disappointments.

It is life, is it not?

And life’s experiences shapes us into the people we become. Am I proud of the man I see in the mirror? Not entirely. But I am not totally ashamed of the man that God has helped me become either. For to me that is the crux of it. That I have been through the fire, injured perhaps, but not consumed. I have faced challenges, knowing I have never stood alone.

Now as I move beyond my 69^th birthday I know...for a fact...that God is not done with me...yet. I must seek out the task that lies before me...the task that would in its way serve the Lord I love. The task that aids God’s kingdom in whatever small way a modest man is able.

So I continue to walk forward and try doing so with my head held just high enough to see the goal that has been set before me. There are nearly 360 days left in this decade of my life, I pray...daily...that I waste not a one.  

  (507 Words) 2-12-2021