Happy DO Year!
Here it is, the start of a brand spanking new year, and I've given up on making a new resolution because if I have to purposely add one more thing to my agenda, I will capsize and sink. It's not that I'm busier than other people, it's than I spent last year focussing my busyness on the things that deserved them. Like me, for instance. Tomorrow I will celebrate a very important birthday. It will mark the beginning of my last 365 days to accomplish all the things I swore I would accomplish before my even more very important birthday. Preparations began last year when in the change room of Mark's Work Wearhouse I realized that my body was irredeemably middle-aged. The hairdresser has a full-length mirror and until she sweeps the cape over me, I must face how yet another indifferent public image-maker views me.It's not pretty. The trouble is, I feel exactly like those women in their eighties feel, when they shuffle a few dancing steps and say they're still young at heart. Let me tell you, it's the truth. I'm still in the midst of figuring life out. I still play pretend and call it novel-writing. But there's nothing like facing the mortality of a body with a muffin top to make me realize that I needed to start walking.Literally and metaphorically.
And yes, some days it feels as if I'm in training. But even here, these guys aren't alone, are they? Or how about these school soldiers in India?
They are in it together. All look of varying age and probably grade, some better dressed than others but all of them following their teacher, all of them doing the walk.Sometimes it is a real walk. Sometimes it is sitting at a keyboard and tapping out the story that rattles about my brain. Sometimes it is my daughter who must fight to finish an assignment while her best friend parties, because she chose the academically tough route. Sometimes it is my son who chose to walk with Jesus and so now needs to do the right thing even when no one is looking. Man, that's a tough one.I don't know what walk you've committed to. Or walks, for that matter. I don't do mine alone, neither do my children. No mountain is climbed alone.So, as I push on through middle age I look forward to knowing that though each of us must walk with their own two feet, it can be done in matching shoes.
And yes, some days it feels as if I'm in training. But even here, these guys aren't alone, are they? Or how about these school soldiers in India?They are in it together. All look of varying age and probably grade, some better dressed than others but all of them following their teacher, all of them doing the walk.Sometimes it is a real walk. Sometimes it is sitting at a keyboard and tapping out the story that rattles about my brain. Sometimes it is my daughter who must fight to finish an assignment while her best friend parties, because she chose the academically tough route. Sometimes it is my son who chose to walk with Jesus and so now needs to do the right thing even when no one is looking. Man, that's a tough one.I don't know what walk you've committed to. Or walks, for that matter. I don't do mine alone, neither do my children. No mountain is climbed alone.So, as I push on through middle age I look forward to knowing that though each of us must walk with their own two feet, it can be done in matching shoes.
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