"Life belongs to the living, and he who lives must be 

prepared for changes."

--Johann Wolfgang von Goethe

Years ago when I was in college, a friend of mine formally introduced me to the music of Stevie Nicks.  I'm sure I'd heard her many times playing on the radio, but I suspect I never really payed much attention to her.  I was more into new wave music and rap.  

Fast forward a few years from then, and I'm a new father, and on one particular occasion I was riding in the car with Grant and I heard "Landslide" on the radio.  In that weird way that only overthinking OCD types like me understand, my mind jumped forward into the future about 20 years, and I'm sitting there looking at my son in the rear view mirror thinking about how "I've been afraid of changin', 'cause I built my life around you."  The changing hadn't even happened yet, but I was absolutely certain of how it would feel.  And here I sit, in 2024, with three grown kids, and would you look at that!!--I was right about how it feel.  I suspect I'm not the only who's at least somewhat scared of change.  

A couple days ago, I was sitting on my bed getting ready for the day, and the thought occurred to me that you cannot possibly be adequately prepared for the changed that come.  I started thinking about all the times I've been caught off-guard by change.  Buckle up!!

Things for which you cannot possibly be prepared for when they happen.

1.  What it feels like the first time a cashier gives you the senior discount, especially if you aren't that old yet.  

2.  How quiet your house is when it's just you there.  

3.  That feeling you get when you realize that your birth year is just as close to 2024 as it is to 1921.  

4.  Having a conversation with your son and in his voice you hear full-on manhood.  

5.  The draw drop that occurs when you see your daughter dressed up in her prom dress.

6.  Seeing you parents deal with health problems you never thought you'd see.

7.  The knowing that one day will be the last day your kid sleeps in your house.

8.  The total unexpectedness with which your kids' high school graduations arrive.

9.  When you think about how much older you are now that your mom was when she went to her 20th high school reunion.  (And you thought she was OLD then!)

10.  When you hear students call 90s rock "classic."

11.  That weird feeling you get nowadays when you are gone somewhere and you just wanna go home, and how welcome that is!

12.  The simple joy that comes from your son being in your house, because he's lived in another state for four years.

13.  That unneeded feeling you get when you see your kids and students do so many things in an accomplished way.  

14.  Waking up and you're like "oh I guess that part of me hurts now."  

15.  Things like "I need reading glasses for the office AND the house" come out of your mouth. 

16.  You actually consider buying a different motorcycle because the one you have is a bit too fast.  Where. The. Actual. Heck. Did. That. Come. From.  

17.  How you can now sit at a coffee shop with your sister and brother in law and feel absolutely NO NEED whatsoever to get up and leave, to go check a box, to accomplish something today.  So not me!

That's enough. 

If you feel attacked, you might be going through some of the same changes.  If you're like me, your first instinct is to go to war with those feelings.  Because we're all 10 feet tall and bulletproof, right?  You might be.  

Richard Rohr says that our lives are in two parts.  In the first part we are building our vessel, as he calls it, and in the second part we are figuring out what is worth putting in that vessel.  We live both these parts in very different ways, and you can't be successful in the second part if you don't finish the first part.  If you haven't read his book Falling Upward, I highly recommend it.  

I find myself squarely in the second part of life, and if Richard Rohr is right, this is where life really and truly is found.  Instead of kicking against the pricks like Paul was doing in Acts, we have to submit to the change around us.  We can either swim upstream against a drowning exhausting current, or we can do with it.  It might even be better to say that we have to gently lean into it.  We have to brush up against the current without trying to completely stop it.  

I think the best way to look at it is like this.  

Look at that guy! He's OLD!!! Not really.  He's still 18.  Only his body is old.  

Live life, folks!! 

 "That event doesn't happen until tonight, so you must be very careful not to run into your other self."

--Dr. Emmett Brown, in Back to the Future

There is a reel going around Instagram and Facebook...in fact it has probably gone around multiple times.  I've seen it twice now, I think, the second time about 10 minutes before I started writing this blog post.  I don't know if it was the moment, or the mood I was in, or a combination of many other things (it was many other things), but I immediately felt like I needed to write this.  TL;DR....

The content of the reel is this:  the text says "your 18 year old self meets your 45 year old self, and asks if your life turned out the way you hoped."  It's edited to include a video graphic of some guy who's saying something like "awww man....kid, you don't wanna know." Or something to that effect. The whole thing is couched in the notion that no, life didn't turn out the way he'd hoped.  

First of all, can you imagine it even being possible to travel into the future??? I mean, O'Reilly Auto Parts does show a flux capacitor on their website, but that thing has been "out of stock" for year.  Losers.  Even if time travel were possible, which it isn't, but if it were, would you be willing to go into the future?  If you could meet your self 27 years into the future, would you want to know what your future self knows??  

When I was 18, I was a very balanced emerging adult--I had a chip on BOTH shoulders.  Life wasn't fair, I was fully aware of it, and I was damn sure gonna make sure I found out who was to blame for all that had "happened" to me.  I remember it well.  I was right.  Everyone else was wrong.  

I remember when I got the offer to be in the LBW Ensemble.  I felt like something has finally gone right in my life.  I still didn't have a clue what the future held, and I was scared to death of moving on past high school.  I didn't know what I wanted to major in.  I knew I was good at music.  I felt like I might like architecture.  As it turned out, music won out.  

This reel I mentioned got me thinking about how life "turns out."  I put that in quotes for a reason, which I'll try to get to in this post.  Wow, where to start.....?

How did life turn out?? Perhaps it's better to ask "how is it turning out?"  Here goes....

I never thought I'd be divorced more years now than how many years I was married.  

I never thought I'd become the successor to Jerry Padgett at LBWCC.  

I never thought I'd have the three amazing children that I have.  

I never thought I'd have a head full of gray hair.  

I never thought I'd have crossed the Pyrenees Mountains on foot, twice.  

I never thought I'd have formed the friendships that I formed by way of teaching the hornline at Southwind Drum and Bugle Corps for 6 years.  

I never thought I'd watch my son's high school years from a distance because he lives in another town with his mom and step dad.  

I never thought my kids would have a step dad.

I never thought I'd drop my son off to go to boot camp.  

I never thought I'd have thousands of photos of my kids and me doing fun things all over the country.

I never thought I'd lie awake nights wondering if my kids are OK when they aren't under the same roof as me.

I never thought I'd get to stand in the back of the room at watch my students light the place up as they perform music.

I never thought I would get to a point where I could look back and remember my favorite thing that ever came out of each of my kids' mouths.  

I never thought I'd get my stomach sliced open due to an inflamed gallbladder. 

I never thought I'd run a half-marathon or ride a century.  

I never thought I'd fly a helicopter.  

I never thought I'd have to take not one, but two blood pressure meds. 

I never thought I'd make it to 51.  Seriously.

This list could go on forever.  The truth is, life has turned out the way it turned out.  Whether it is good or bad is entirely my choice.  Victor Frankl's timeless book, Man's Search for Meaning, expounds on this concept--that we decide what is and isn't meaningful.  We decide what is good or bad.  We get to decide.  There are things in the list above that are "bad." There are also things that are pretty freaking epic!  But whether they are bad or good is entirely subjective, depending on who is looking at them.  

Is life perfect?  Nope.  Is it pretty darn amazing?  Yep.  So, to my 18 year old self, I say, "well, it all depends on what you thought life was gonna be."  But with the experience that only can come from having lived life, I'd say it's pretty grand!!