And on a recent trip to visit my grandchildren in Maryland, I saw the same learning curve on the Question of Fairness in play. Wheel do go 'round in circles, still.
It certainly had that effect on me. So, I simply repeated -- after each mean-spirited slight of another child toward them, or when one of them was convinced the other had more ice cream (as measured by teaspoons, I suspect), or the miscarriage of justice in both of them having to go to bed at the same time (despite the eons of difference between being 5 and 7!) -- that, "Life is not fair. It just is (life)."
OK, certainly not as profound as God declaring to the curious Moses that His Name was, "I AM that I AM." Although, within the Mims household of the kids' youngest years, the debate certainly was as intense, if things are relative. (But of course, we know relativity, applied to questions of fairness, justice, and all the rest is also a plunge down the rabbit hole that lurks at the base of our finite minds; that's another conversation, though).
But no matter how "mature" we get, we always will have moments where our inner child flops on the ground, disconsolate, and cries, "This just isn't fair!"
When your 96-year-old father -- once a talented musician, bright of intellect, and example of Christian faith lived as much as he preached -- lives his final year in arthritic pain, stroke-induced dementia, and deafness that has you shouting "I love you in his ear," is that "fair?"
Or, your 91-year-old mother -- once sharp-minded, funny, fiercely loving, and able to play the piano as if she were bleeding her vibrance into its keys -- lives her final years having lost cognition, memories, or even the ability to care for her most basic bodily functions? Again, not "fair."
I promise, this will not become a litany of "unfair" events or situations I've seen in 2019, or in my span of 66 years. Honestly, they pale compared to those endured by millions of others on this planet we call home. And truly, what makes any one of us immune to the sufferings, too-often self-imposed, that are common to human kind?
Life changes, every day, in ways dramatic and miniscule alike. We love, we lose; we delight, we suffer; we comfort, and we are comforted.
On Earth, we have what we have . . . measures of joy and mourning, triumph and disappointment, years of health and decline, opportunities to serve, heal and embrace, and to learn humility, by being served, being healed, being embraced.
Those things I have learned, either in 2019 itself, or through life-long experience and what illumination faith has provided to clarify, and expand in the past trip around Old Sol. Most important to me, as a believer, is that God is with those who call upon Him. Mostly, He sees us through the pain, disappointments, challenges, but does not deliver us from them.
Babies don't learn to crawl unless you put them down and beckon them. Toddlers don't walk successfully until they are released to step, fall, and get up again. And in the scope of Eternity, we have all just begun to crawl.
Even at 66 years old.
As you can, walking in the eternal, uncreated light, Love, unconditionally. Give, generously. Live each breath, each heartbeat, each second, minute, hour and year you have left in forgiveness, and gratitude.
May God bless your New Year with His Presence, in and through all things.
