I’m uncertain of what lies ahead, and recent years have been a bit bumpy. Joy seems to flee a bit more readily. The person I am today doesn’t feel like the version found in my recent past. My daughter believes the change began during the building of our new home. My inclination is that it started earlier than that.
The loss of my nephew and sister were devastating blows. During that season, we unmoored from a church we had served for a decade. Additionally, the kids have now both graduated from college and started lives of their own while our parents moved in next door. It feels like we are restarting our lives with new relationships in a new place in a new season.
I do my best to take care of things. This provides some level of satisfaction and is my life’s default; determine what is most important and work on that. Even so, the best things in life aren’t quantifiable and can’t be put on a to-do list. These include love and family, friendship and beauty, and faith. Yet all these are pressured by daily affairs. And since projects never end, there is always more in the queue waiting time and turn.
When life gets complicated, I find it helpful to simplify. It is difficult but liberating to realize that I can’t do it all and that some things will just have to wait. This means that each day I choose how I live and what I do and the rest I put into God’s hands. Some things will get left undone, even good things. Yet simplify and choose I must. And when I do it frees me to do my best and find peace in trusting that it is enough.
Life passes so quickly. As Corey Rich has written,
“In order to maximize what’s important you have to minimize everything that isn’t.”