“Three things you can’t recover in life: the word after it’s said, the moment after it’s missed, and the time after it’s gone.”
—Ziad K. Abdelnour
My forever best girlfriend, Darcy, is here visiting. We have known each other since before I sobered up–more than 30 years. We haven’t been together in person for over a year. Yes, we have Marco Poloed and talked on the phone for hours, but it’s just not the same as being together.
We shared many great memories and yet, there were many things that we both wish we would have paid more attention to. We both wished we would have gotten to know our parents more. We now have questions that we wish we would’ve asked. There were opportunities that we didn’t recognize that went unnoticed. Risks we could’ve taken might have been life-changing. Maybe we didn’t slow our lives down often enough to really enjoy them.
Barbara Bush compared life to a train, to emphasize how today does matter:
“We get on that train at birth, and we want to cross the continent because we have in mind that somewhere out there is a station. We pass by sleepy little towns looking out the window of life’s train, grain fields and silos, level grade crossings, buses full of people on the roads beside us. We pass by cities and factories, but we don’t look at any of it because we want to get to the station…This station changes for us during life. To begin with, for most of us, it’s turning 18, getting out of high school. Then the station is that first promotion and then the station becomes getting the kids out of college, and then the station becomes retirement and then…all too late we recognize the truth–that this side of that city, whose builder is God, there really isn’t a station. The joy is in the journey and the journey is the joy. Sooner or later, you realize there is not a station and the truth of life is the trip. Read a book, eat more ice cream, go barefoot more often, hug a child, go fishing, laugh more. The station will come soon enough. And as you go, find a way to make life more beautiful.”
For dinner last night, Darcy and I had Butterfinger ice cream cones and pumpkin spice donut holes. We watched old sitcoms, relived the fun parts of our lives and laughed hard and long. We shed a few tears, as well. We decided that whatever regrets we did have, we were blessed in spite of them. Go figure.
In our quiet time this morning, Darcy read a Bible verse that she had read twice today from different sources, “Behold, I am doing a new thing, do you not perceive it?” (Isaiah 43:19)
“What do you think God has in store for us?” she wondered out loud. We both agreed that we would wait and watch the “new thing” unfold. We would know the “new thing” when it was revealed to us. In the meantime, we are going to enjoy the journey, because there’s so much more life to come!
Gotta go, Darcy’s out of the shower and I don’t want to miss a moment with her!
Enjoying the journey,
Jan
Jan McDonald
The John Maxwell Team
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