Life Changes Us; Or Does It?

I sometimes find it funny how some things in life never truly do change. The bond we have with some people, even after years and years of being part, remains intact. A high school friend that was one of those special folks you had a connection with and knew you could trust with your innermost secrets, is still someone you can, in adulthood, confide in freely. And, in the same vein, that girl you went to high school with who was so busy trying to convince others of her importance, later in life, is still trying. You can sense it, not so much in what they say and do, but in what they don’t do and don’t say. Somehow it is baffling that life has not changed them.

Some of the negative persona's, the bad seeds in our life, will usually remain so. Perhaps that is why Dr. Phil is fond of saying “Kick a loser in your life to the curb.” He knows history does repeat itself. Unhealthy personalities that take advantage of your goodness and want only for themselves are users for their own gain. These people are not worthy of our graces. These people do not change. Do not put your time and energy into what my cousin’s girlfriend Levaughn calls “People that are two faced.” She is right, they do make you feel as if they need a smack of the backhand, but even that will not change the nature of who they are users of others. Good people, likewise, are true of heart and remain so.

Having come from a divorced family, as there are so many broken homes these days that it is becoming common place, I see all around me signs of broken marriages. Marriages that in spite of being together, they are broken. People going through the rigors of life and in one sense, growing and changing but the bonding between husband and wife, the commitment seems to either be there or, in general, not. Those of us with someone who is committed to us from the start are indeed the lucky ones. That is something that never quite seems to change. Those marriages, those couples find the work they put towards the courtship, towards planning a wedding and a future; they use to forge through issues and continually keep the marriage alive and well. Even with the setbacks, they always come back to each other with the same goal in mind.

Changes in our life seem to never really effect the healthy bonds that we have with the people in our lives that make us better people. This is definitely true with the bond with the siblings that love us unconditionally. My sisters can pick up the phone and call me and we are right back to ten or twenty years ago, sharing all our thoughts and dreams with abandonment knowing the intimacy we share is special and priceless. That will never change, not with age. When I battled cancer and my sister told me she could not imagine life without talking to me, I assured her God would not, could not allow me to be in heaven without our gabbing sessions because those were heaven sent moments to me. Heaven is a place that is euphoria and those talks are simply that; food for my soul and I think for hers also. No matter how our life changes, this bond remains the same.

We change but our faith in God is always there, inside our soul. We wander away from the closeness of this relationship throughout our life as we convince ourselves subconsciously we are fearless, invincible, and need no help. There are even times when we are angry for all we are not, what we do not have, for the things we have lost and the lot we have been handed in life. But in our hour of need, in the wee hours of the morning, when our heart is breaking, when our souls our hurting, we visually or physically reflect on the past, as if we are children saying our faithful prayers to God. We ask in our adult voices for the same thing we asked for as children, for His angels to descend on us and bring us what we need to get through our modern day crisis knowing we need His help, his intervention. We may grow old, we may grow weary, and we may deny God from time to time, but those of us with true faith in Him will always carry Him inside no matter how much we change and will always find ourselves stepping back into prayer along the way.

I have met many people facing cancer. I have met folks with Stage 1 and folks with Stage 4. I have talked with people on their death bed. I find that who they are, when they are entering heaven, is undoubtedly who they came into the world being, someone wide eyed, full of innocence in a sense about the wonderment of heaven and being in the presence of God much as they were as when they were an infant coming into this temporary place. The sense of peace they feel as they approach dying is much like the sense of calm they felt in their mother’s arms as they know they are going back to their Father, the one that truly did create them. All the years we spend on earth, all the roads traveled and yet, here at the end, we land on the very same stepping stone of emotion. It is as if all the years fade into oblivion. Yes, life has been a journey, a passing and yet, at the end, we are still in our infancy entering a new wondrous place…………………..as it was in the Beginning.