Do you ever keep getting the same message over and over again in your daily life?
People totally unrelated to one another keep saying the same thing?
Or you read something similar from different sources all pointing to a consistent message?
Sometimes, it’s life events. They may not even seem to be related, but to you they are all resonating with a common theme.
I think Jung calls it synchronicity.
When this happens, oftentimes, for me, my spirit knows something before my mind can process it. The last few weeks have been like that for me.
It started with a funeral, it connects with a four-wheeler, and it ends with a stack of journals.
I’ll start with the funeral –
Death on this earth is inevitable.
And before our time comes, we will see others depart. This will leave us with two options – we can choose to look or we can choose to look away.
When we choose to look, we are given the opportunity to celebrate a life, mourn with families and community and reflect on the things that matter the most.
As I looked at this person’s life, I was overwhelmed with the significance.
I saw beauty, impact, and even more so, legacy.
Her life was overflowing with evidence of the things that really mattered.
It was a life fully lived. A life one can be proud of.
Those around her described as “unselfish, generous, sacrificial and loving.” Her joy was found in her family, and they knew it.
Reflecting on a life like this, births introspection and retrospection. It also causes you to consider the alternative and compare and contrast. All of which I did for days….
Then came the four-wheeler.
This second event was a very odd and surprising connection to my past, which led only to what I can surmise as proof of God.
We all know Facebook shows us “mutual friends.”
Grayson’s godfather, Geoff, is my husband’s best friend. Geoff’s mom watches Grayson very regularly throughout the week when I go to train. I saw that she is friends with an old boyfriend’s mom, and I couldn’t help but ask how they knew each other.
Apparently, their families have been friends for years – this old boyfriends mom had married their family doctor.
Ok….Baltimore has about two degrees of separation. Not that weird. Here’s where things get weird.
There’s currently a four-wheeler in my shed.
We’ve had the four-wheeler for 5 years.
Will got the four-wheeler from Geoff.
Geoff got the four-wheeler from these family friends.
I rode this four-wheeler at 22 with this old boyfriend, thinking I would marry him. That weekend, he asked me about rings.
Twelve years later, I married Will.
And that four-wheeler is somehow in my garage.
You have to understand how mind blown I was in this discovery.
How does that four-wheeler come back into my story?
It’s hard to describe what happened to me when I realized that four-wheeler was my four-wheeler. It was as if I went back into my body, 22 on that four-wheeler – then connected it to now, watching Will come up my driveway with Grayson on his lap. Both memories collided together, and I could see that God has never left or forsaken me.
In that moment the four-wheeler became a symbol for something else.
God revealed His sovereignty in my life through it.
What I saw was love, mercy and grace.
I felt the whisper of “I told you to trust me. Do you see now?”
That’s the thing about faith –
I wasn’t sure God would ever bring marriage in my life to fruition.
And it didn’t happen quickly. It took 12 years from the person I thought I’d marry, to the person I was meant to marry.
This story may not make sense to anyone else, but isn’t that how God works? Very specifically – very relationally. Speaking to us in ways that we understand personally.
The third and final event happened a few days later.
For weeks, I’ve thought about the crates of journals I have in my basement and I’ve thought “what if something happens to me and Grayson reads them?”
There are some things a son shouldn’t know about his mother…sure, let him speculate, but let’s not confirm!
So, I went into my basement to get them. The plan? Straight to the firepit.
These are journals I sought never to return to.
Just the sight of them overwhelms me.
As I picked up the dusty crate, I saw one on the top with a scripture: “Tis grace hath brought me safe thus far, and grace will lead me home.”
I grew curious.
At which stage of my life was this? I reluctantly opened it. I began to read. I began to cry.
I had a few random journals from middle school and high school, but the bulk of my journals began in college. I quickly searched for the blue journal – the very first one from my freshman year at Penn State. If I’m going to read through some of these, I guess I should start from the beginning.
The pages bleed with questions —
Who am I?
What do I want my life to look like?
Why am I here?
Who is God and what does He want from me?
What’s right?
What’s wrong?
What’s meaningful?
What’s real?
What’s the meaning of life?
Why do I feel like this?
Why is this so hard?
Why am I sad?
Why am I anxious?
How can I feel better?
How can I be better?
Question after question – challenging everything – searching for truth. What I find as I read, is a young woman who really just wanted what I think we all want –
I wanted love.
I wanted acceptance.
I wanted the truth.
I wanted to be seen and heard.
I wanted to know who I was and why I was here.
I wanted to know all the same things one asks after a funeral…
It’s funny –
I always wanted to be the kid who went to college and had the time of her life. Carefree and reckless.
Nope. Dead serious. Reading Thoreau, Emerson, Plath, Sexton, the Bible … trying to map out what life was about and how I was going to live it. I still get on my own nerves with this a little. Like, just go play some beer pong like a normal college kid or something…(legally, of course, for anyone underage reading this!)
Instead, it was one of life’s valleys. Literally, it makes me laugh to think that God put me in “Happy Valley.”
This valley wasn’t so happy. It was my first real reckoning.
The beginning of an unraveling.
Some of what I read still grieves me. I feel lit all again.
Some of it, I feel healed from.
And some of it, I’ve learned, must be dealt with at every stage of our journey.
That unraveling doesn’t end –
We are challenged in our belief systems as we choose careers, as we choose spouses, at the arrival of our children, as we start to raise our children.
We deal with things and we arrive at the next stage, only to discover we have more to deal with! And if we don’t deal with our stuff, our stuff will deal with us.
As I continued to read – at times reluctant, and at times feeling like a spectator, one thing continued to amaze me.
As I asked questions.
As I chose rebellion.
In times where pain and bitterness led me down dark roads before I could find healing, there was always one constant.
Every entry sought God.
Even at my worst.
And some of these entries are ugly – hard to read.
But there are always cries for help, a longing for truth, and a pursuit of God’s will.
As I sat and I read, I saw the promises God has fulfilled in my life.
The funeral points back to the questions I asked so young.
I was asking about significance.
I was defining success.
I was thinking about what it means to impact?
I was pondering legacy. We all leave one, what would mine be?
The question is, when it all ends – when your children and your grandchildren speak at your funeral, what will they say?
I promise, their words will tell the story.
When Jesus said the most important command is to love God and love others He tells us about the meaning of life.
It’s relational.
It’s not in posts.
Or job titles.
It’s not your bank account.
The journals are all attempts toward the end goal of a life fully lived.
Each word with a deliberate aim at healing, loaded and striving for the fullness of an authentic self made in the image of God.
The fourwheeler is just proof that God holds us every step of the way.
Everyone should ask themselves who they are and why they are here.
Everyone should ask themselves what’s the meaning of life.
And I hope that everyone can see that God is with us, at every turn, at every step whispering “Trust me. My plan is better.”
Warrior Soccer Training 