The Life I Was Given

Each of us is given a life.

A gift.

And that gift begins unfolding long before we understand what we have been given.

I was fortunate to have a good childhood. We didn't have much in material terms, but I had things I now realize were far more valuable: imagination, woods to explore, a church community, and friends.

I loved learning, though I can't say I particularly loved school. I was also the kid who stood up to the bullies on the playground. Strangely enough, most of them eventually became my friends. Looking back, I can see that something in me was already forming, a desire to stand beside people, especially those who needed someone in their corner. That instinct has followed me throughout my life.

Then came my early twenties.

 I made some serious mistakes. I married the wrong person.  I lost the vision I once had of attending seminary and following wherever that path might lead me to. 

For a time, I lost more than a plan.

I lost a part of myself.

And yet, God was there.

I can see that now.

Through every failure, something in me was lost, but something also survived. And what survived, I have learned from, although at times painfully.   

Fortunately, or perhaps unfortunately, those life lessons would continue for another fifty years.

I was eventually blessed with an incredible family, a talented wife, and opportunities I could never have imagined. Somehow, the young man who once dreamed of seminary became the Director of Social Work at the Masonic Children's Home and then, through a series of unexpected turns, found himself in the emerging computer industry.

I even opened one of the first computer stores in America. It thrived, until it didn't.

That, too, became part of the pattern.

I moved into the corporate world and worked for several companies, often managing large regions across the Southeast. More than once, I was handed an underperforming region and helped turn it into one of the best in the company.

And then technology changed.

Or a merger happened.

Or an acquisition reorganized everything.

And suddenly, I was out of work.

Not because I had failed, but because sometimes life changes the rules while you're still playing the game.

I enjoyed working with intelligent, talented people and meeting many of them. I learned how corporations worked. I learned how to lead. I learned how to compete. I learned how to succeed in that world.

But deep inside, I knew something.

I was never really a computer guy.

And my soul was never truly corporate, although I became quite good at playing the part.

Perhaps that is one of the great questions of life:

How long can we succeed at being someone we were never created to be?

My life has taken many things from me. At times, it has felt like more than one person should be asked to lose.

Dreams.

Careers.

Certainty.

Identity.

Hope.

And yet, somehow, through all of it, I believe I became a better man.

Not without a price.

There were seasons of depression, denial, disappointment, and hardship. And I am deeply sorry for the times my wife had to walk through those dark valleys with me.

But today, at seventy-three years old, I find myself in a place I could never have planned.

I believe I am where God wants me.

And I believe I am finally doing what I was meant to do.

That doesn't mean I have figured everything out.

Far from it.

I still wrestle with faith. I still wrestle with trusting God for whatever comes next. There is still a part of me that wants to grab the wheel, take back control, and tell God, Thank you very much, but I think I can handle it from here.

But something has changed.

The things I write about, I no longer simply believe.

I live them.

I am trying to practice faith, not certainty, because I know who give me Grace and a future.  

And here is the great irony of my life:

I am never going to get it completely right.

And perhaps I was never supposed to.

Those of us who were raised in Christianity sometimes misunderstand the message. We can spend our lives striving to become perfect, more religious, more disciplined, more spiritual, as though God is waiting for us to finally get everything right.

But I have come to believe that Jesus is calling us toward something both simpler and far more difficult.

To become fully human.

To acknowledge that we are imperfect.

That we fall.

That we lose our way.

That we carry wounds.

That we sometimes forget who we are.

And then, by grace, we rise again.

The Christian story is not the story of human perfection.

It is the story of resurrection.

Again and again.

We fall, and grace lifts us.

We wander, and love calls us home.

We lose ourselves, and somewhere along the journey, God begins revealing the person who was there all along.

Maybe that is what my seventy-three years have been about.

Not becoming perfect.

Not becoming someone else.

But slowly, painfully, beautifully becoming the person God created me to be.

And if there is one thing I hope my remaining years might accomplish, it is to help others make that same discovery.

Because your life is a gift, too.

Every part of it.

Even the chapters you wish you could rewrite.

And perhaps the journey was never about getting everything right.

Perhaps it was always about finding your way home.

And when I read and study Scripture, as I have throughout my life, I see a thread running through it all: a powerful and loving God at work in the very midst of our ordinary lives. Yet sometimes we are so blinded by our ambitions, our striving, and our need to control what comes next that we fail to see the greatest gift of all, a God who loves us and desires to share this life with us. Perhaps what God asks is not that we strive harder to become something more, but that we finally surrender our need to become anything at all, to loosen our grip, open our hearts, and simply be.