Time and Change

It's hard to believe another summer is winding down already and soon it will be fall and then winter again. The longer I live, the more it seems like time is racing past. It's funny that when you are little and you want time to speed up, it moves so slowly, and once you're an adult and heading towards 30 and you would like for time to slow down, it just runs away from you. I'll tell you a secret - I still don't feel like an adult half the time. My body is convinced it's 28, but my mind hasn't decided yet.

A couple weeks ago, I moved out of the house I was renting, and sold my car. Three weeks from now, I'll be getting ready to board a plane for Germany to spend the next 13 months working at a resort hotel. If anyone had told me 6 months ago I'd be HERE (or even 4 months ago actually), I would have laughed at them. The lesson the past 3 months have taught me is to trust that when life seems to be topsy-turvy or just downright annoying, there's a bigger plan in the works. I feel very, very blessed to be where I am today, and I know that in the midst of my complaining about where I was in the past, I am not very deserving to have been given all that I have now. But I am grateful for a God that looks beyond our human frailties and our inability and unwillingness to understand His plan, and sees instead what we potentially can be.

I think sometimes in my life I have been afraid to let myself be happy, because I was afraid it would slip away or that something bad would happen if I was. But I have begun to realize that in order to truly enjoy life, you have to experience both the highs and lows fully. Yes, sometimes living in the moment when life is good can seem to make it more devastating if something goes wrong. But it's the moments when things are difficult that make those good moments even more precious. You can't have one without the other - not in this life, not on this planet.

It might be poor theology from a Christian standpoint, but it makes me think of a quote from the movie Troy.
"I'll tell you a secret, something they don't teach you in your temple. The gods envy us. They envy us because we're mortal, because any moment might be our last. Everything is more beautiful because we're doomed."
It's a morbid thought, but there is a morsel of truth in it.

Life really is mostly what you make of it. Regardless of what is ahead in this life, or what is yet in eternity to come, this moment right now is all you truly have. It's a gift, so embrace it with everything you have. Yesterday is gone, and there's no promise of tomorrow in this world. But I have NOW to live, now to appreciate this day that I've been given. Now to smile, and laugh, and dance. And tomorrow? Well, I don't really know anything about tomorrow. It might be full of sunshine, or maybe it's full of storms. But I know Who holds tomorrow, and that's enough for me.