Hello, my friends. Have you ever had one of those experiences where you think everybody else knows what they're doing, and you're the only one who's just making life up as you go?
Well, you're not. Everybody's just making it up. I've been thinking a lot lately about an experience I had a couple of weeks ago. My wife and I had the opportunity to celebrate our 40th wedding anniversary, which means that we got married when we were three and four years old, respectively, or something.
40 years is quite a long time. At least one of us has been very patient for 40 years. We didn't know what we were doing. When we got married, we had no clue what we were doing. We didn't know how to be spouses. We didn't know diddly squat.
We got married in the morning, and then after pictures and everything, headed out for our grand honeymoon. I think we had, if I remember correctly, $300 to make this honeymoon happen. And so we went to a little town and stayed in a little hotel. I walked in to get the room and she and I were wearing matching shirts, so it was obvious, as the person at the front desk looked and saw her sitting in the car, that we were two little, two little country kids wearing matching shirts.
And I explained that we needed a room for the night. And then, feeling really embarrassed and awkward because I wasn't sure what the protocol was, I had to explain very shyly that we just needed the one bed. I didn't know anything. We finally went the next night, to a nice restaurant. That was part of how we were going to spend our 300 whopping dollars, and we didn't have enough to tip the waiter, nor did we know that we were supposed to. We didn't know how to pay rent for the first time. We didn't know how to find an apartment, though eventually through some miracle we did.
And then, we started school. She started college, and I started college at the same place. And, uh, she eventually dropped out to marry me. But I was going to school and working three jobs and she was working some part time jobs on the side just so we could get through all of this, and a, year and a half or so into that a baby came along. A little girl. She was just absolutely sweet and cute and we were very excited to have her, and we were very excited to name her, and we had our time in the hospital, and then it was time to go. The nurses handed us the child. And as we were walking out to the car, my wife looked at me with great concern and said---(she calls me Nath. It's short for Nathan)---she said, "Nath, they're just letting us take her!" We were both shocked. That's all there is? You just leave the hospital and we're supposed to be parents now? We didn't know what we were doing. I remember buckling that car seat into the car so carefully. This was our pride and joy, our precious little treasure. We didn't know that we would have four more of those., But it was scary and exciting and new all at once.
When that little girl was about almost two years old, we had so little money that we took to shocking worms. So if you don't know what that is: we got some metal rods that were about, I don't know, two feet long and they had a wooden handle on them, and they were connected with a power cord. And you would plug that into a plug in, and then you would go shove those metal rods into the ground. And they would produce enough current that it would just sort of tickle or shock the nightcrawlers a little bit, and they would come out up onto the surface, and then we would gather them up and sell them to the bait shops the next morning, so that we could buy our food for the day. Our little girl would help us gather those worms. We have pictures of her walking around holding night crawlers about two or three inches long and trying to put them in the bucket.
When it was time for a second child, we wondered if we would love her as much as the first one. The answer, by the way, for those of you who don't know, Is that your love bucket just gets bigger for both. We loved our second, and third, and fourth, and fifth. We spent some time remodeling a house that should have been condemned. Had it been inspected, I'm sure it would have been. There was water floating in all the heater vents and used Q-tips from who knows how far back. The windows were broken out in the basement and the carpet was so deep in water that there were mushrooms growing in the mushy, wet, sloppy carpet.
Our kids got old enough to send to school. And then to junior high. And then to high school. And then out on their own. We had losses and triumphs. We had broken cars and broken limbs. Sickness and health. Arguments and romance. Poverty and plenty. Failure and success. Kids becoming older kids, and then actual people, and then parents, and our friends. Friends to us and friends to each other.
And so, two weeks ago, we decided we would celebrate this 40 year anniversary by retracing our steps to the very location where we were married. We took a picture in front of the tree, that we had taken a picture in front of before. My wife wore the same color skirt and the same color top.
As we thought about what had happened there, and contemplated the vows that we made, I had an experience that I can scarcely describe. For just a moment, it's as though my eyes were open to eternity and I could see the ripples of those experiences spreading to our children and then beyond to others: the huge number of friends and loved ones that we had, who influenced us throughout our lives. For a moment, I could see the whole thing, and I was filled with gratitude. It's not that I forgot about all the difficult stuff. I didn't forget about job losses and injuries and the loss of loved ones.
I didn't forget any of that. But I could see all of it, and it was beautiful. The only feeling I can describe is overwhelming gratitude. Tears streamed down my face as I tried to explain it to my wife, to help her understand what I had seen and what I had felt about a life that went absolutely nothing like what I had expected.
I can't begin to count the number of times we thought we had gone as far as we could; the number of times we were so exhausted by life that we thought it would never get better, or that we had somehow lost the fight for a good life that had really scarcely begun. It was difficult to pry ourselves time after time out of complacency, or fear, or fatigue, and re enter the fray. We couldn't see the forest for the trees, and we still can't, in the grand scheme of things. Nor can you.
We often hear people say about one experience or another, "well, you decide what it means." It would probably be more accurate to say, "What you decide it means, it means. And that becomes your life." Where we are is not all of what we have become, and it's not what our lives yet hold.
Jordan Peterson has something important to say about this, quote, "You are by no means only what you already know. You are also all that which you could know, if you only would. Thus, you should never sacrifice what you could be for what you are. You should never give up on the better that resides within, for the security you already have, and certainly not when you've already caught a glimpse, an undeniable glimpse of something beyond." Unquote.
We learn almost nothing from things going as we expected. We learn little from success and much from one challenge after another. It can be easy at times to feel hopeless, or that our burdens, our challenges, our losses are greater than we can bear, and more permanent than any happiness, but that is not the case. Hard things are seldom permanent. Important things, true things, real things are eternal.
Often, it is from the ashes of old flames, and the rubble of small dreams, that the grandest structures and the most joyful lives are erected.
I thank God, the Master Builder, for giving me a glimpse of things hoped for and evidence of things not seen. Search for the beauty in your life, and you will find it in abundance and learn what things really mean. We'll talk again soon.