Looking Back

 

It’s almost time to renew my passport, which means another ten years of my life has gone by. It’s got me reminiscing and thinking about all that has happened in the last decade. Life has changed a lot in those years.

In 2015, my husband and I were looking forward to a once-in-a-lifetime trip to Israel – hence, the need for the passport. Since then we have traveled to many other new places and re-visited a few others. We still like to travel.

The last time I applied for a passport, I didn’t know that within a year I would be moving an hour north and that the next ten years would include a total of three moves and three different houses. Some future things are probably better unknown.

Because I didn’t know I would be moving to a new city, I also didn’t know that I would become a member of two different churches in the next decade and have many new opportunities for ministry with new people I hadn’t even met yet.

Ten years ago, I couldn’t envision what my grandparenting journey would look like and that in 2025 I would have four wonderful grandchildren. I didn’t know back then that one of my future grandsons had already been born and my first granddaughter was already on the way. As grandma to adopted kids, I wouldn’t meet them for another 2-3 years.

I had no way to know at that time that my second son would meet and fall in love with his future wife and that they would be celebrating three years of marriage this week. And I didn’t know that the rest of 2022 would hold our “circle of life” experiences of losing my Mom along with getting a new lease on life for my husband.

And there was no way I could know that my future flights to see my older son and his family would no longer take me to California but rather to the Midwest. Like I said, a lot has changed since 2015.

I’ve heard people say that they wish they could know what the future holds. I’m a planner, so I can understand that sentiment. But after reviewing the past ten years in my memories, I think it’s better that we don’t know everything that’s coming down the line - because life holds both joy and pain, and facing each thing as it comes gives us the opportunity to trust God every step of the way.

And one thing that hasn’t changed is God’s faithfulness and his presence with me through every up and down. That’s something I can count on no matter how many years go by and how many other things change.