This morning’s meditation became too personal. Forgive me please. I hope it will have some relevance in your life as well.
All my life I have been fascinated with friends and family who reach a special moment in their life. One example I’ve written about before, occurred when my football teammates reached the end of their football career. The cause of the end varied. One teammate may have a career ending injury, another may simply run out of eligibility, a third might come to the realization that he didn’t posses the skills to continue. Whatever the cause, football in many cases had been an all-consuming life for my teammates, and now it was over. Many of my teammates adjusted and moved on, but a few remained lost for a very long time. Some remain lost to this day, living in the distant past.
As I continued beyond football, I noticed the same phenomena continue to occur. My friends might reach the peak of their professional career, have a marriage fall apart, fall victim to a mid-life crisis, or lose their way due to a thousand other reasons. They had spent so much of their lives dedicated to a certain path in life, and now it was gone, and a unique form of depression settled upon him or her.
We don’t have to be young to be similarly lost or depressed. As we mature, we often face a serious illness. We adjust and devote our energies to combatting the disease or injury and thank God when we are successful. After we celebrate overcoming this obstacle, we wonder what is next. Life has suddenly become fragile, and unlike my football teammates we realize that we don’t have a whole life ahead of us and multiple opportunities to choose from. Instead, we wonder what God has in store for us, and what we are meant to accomplish with our time left.
Our meditations and prayers become more serious. God’s answers to our questions vary. For some he/she may say “you’ve done enough, enjoy the time you have left.” For others God may tell us to complete that “Great American novel” or compose the “World’s greatest symphony.” God knows that, unlike my teammates, our options left are limited, but if we ask he will ultimately answer our questions.
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