Why me?

When my Dad died I remember seeing the daylight dim like someone had flicked a dimmer switch. Mum had just returned from the hospital, to our grandparent’s home, where we were staying, safely wrapped in love with our Gram and Grandpop. We were so excited to have her home, John and Paul had been doing cartwheels and tumbles on the lawn; I was doing a concert recital, dreaming I was the most beautiful ballerina in the world. We had no idea; no way could we have anticipated the news she’d give us as she called us, one by one, to sit beside her on the back veranda. For the first time my world stopped and then headed at speed in a completely different direction.
It’s always easiest to give a nod to God when the days are rosy and golden and good. It’s so much harder to look at the darker days with the same acceptance. How can a God who loves us so, let bad things happen?
I have always understood there is a plan, a method to the madness. When I consider the person that I am now I know it is all the layers of all the experiences I’ve had in my life that make me ,ME! They’re the building blocks of my value and belief system, my sense of humour, my sense of honour and justice and the foundation of the way that I will react in any set of circumstances.
From our earliest memories we recall heading in a direction, only to have circumstances bring us to a halt and then to hurtle us in another direction like a pinball machine. Each direction brings us joys and sorrows, moments when we are wise and moments when we are foolish and from all of them we grow and change and turn into the next version of ourselves.
Our lives read backwards like a resume, a curriculum vitae of our humanity training. This is where I learned about compassion, this is where I learned of betrayal; this moment is where I learned of joy that makes me weep with remembering, this is where I learned of grief. And this training is particular only to me, as yours is to you.
The story of our lives has many plotlines and the highs and lows can lead us to a single moment in time, so small we may not recognise it, but its ripples will echo in eternity. An example? My life has made me who I am. It means that when I parent its unique to me and it makes my boys unique, their life experiences making them think and act in a particular way. Perhaps one day because of my parents and my life’s journey and my boy’s journeys; a moment will appear where their children (or even their grandchildren) will need to make a split second decision, a heroic rescue, or to stand up as a world leader or more humbly and without thought, to give up a crust of bread to another who needs it more? Can it be that in anticipating what reaction we’ll need to make in that moment; all of our joy and suffering to that point may have been a requirement, a necessity?
Those are the moments when from the greater distance of time we recognise God’s hand; and looking back through the generations we note the milestones, the moulding, the guiding, the tragedy that hasn’t harmed us but made us stronger. A full and rich life journey that has bought us to this moment. A good life, well lived. Just a thought! Jeremiah 29:11