Cimetaro Part #2

Hi again. As I have continued to think about the little old lady and her flowers and the significance of this to our lives (and to keep you from having to read an entire book in the last post), there is another thing that the whole scene of her with her flowers heading off the boat at what we perceived as the "wrong" stop that I wanted to write to you about.

You see, I am sure that when that little older lady was like Melissa and I, 35 and 37 respectively, she had no inkling of the fact that this would someday be her - someday taking flowers to the cimetaro. Her life was no doubt full of smiles and laughter and fun and joy and work and stress etc, etc. But life does not always go as we plan it. So many times we set up our lives running for, pursuing, chasing after something - our mission is to make enough money to..., to find the perfect guy/girl..., to raise the perfect family..., to prove those people wrong who said you'd never be anybody..., to have tons of friends and be loved by everyone..., to be strong and fit and be perfectly shaped..., and on and on. And then we wake up one day and realize that Mr. Right is not fulfilling us the way we thought he would, that we either are never going to make enough money or that all that money never really gave us any deep joy, that the perfect body doesn't make us happy, because it only draws attention to parts of us that will simply be saggy and droopy eventually anyway, that the perfect family doesn't exist and that our kids may just become delinquent no matter what we do...

Life under the American Dream of health, wealth and prosperity sometimes leads to a lifetime of investing in the things that end up leading to disease, internal poverty and failure of character and dissatisfaction with life.

The little lady at cimetaro reminds us that life does not always end up the way we envision it - in fact, most of the time it doesn't.

If anyone would have told me that 6 years ago this April fool's day, my sweet 29 year old wife would have a stroke when she was 8 weeks pregnant with our 3rd child I would have never believed it. Yet, there I sat, in the Er, watching the left side of her face droop...there I drove with her in the car, speaking nonsense and having seen her so dizzy she could barely walk...there I sat in the MRI control room listening to the voice on the other end of the line tell me that it was a stroke...there she sat morning and night, day after day, plunging a needle slowly into her pregnant belly, quoting, "I can do all things through Christ who gives me strength," and then pushing the plunger with a grimace. You see, we never expected this any more than the little older lady expected to be stopping at the cimetaro...but it happened...anyway.

I am not going to paint Melissa's hardship as light and cute now, 6 years later. It was awful. Our lives will never be the same. But I can tell you this, there is no way either of us would have made it with our sanity were it not for the amazing love of God. We have decided to redirect our lives into a quest for more of the God who made us and gives us the wonderful gift of life every day. Yes, life has its twists and turns - and I do not understand them all, never will. But all the money I have ever had has never satisfied; all the degrees and education, no; all the fitness and strength, no; all the fame and accolades, no; all the whatever you are running after will never satisfy you unless you run after More - the One More who satisfies fully - God.

If your life has been a quest for things that have not satisfied you. If you see the inability of yourself and your life by itself to fulfill you, consider joining us this Thursday night at McAllister Center - 20th and Schuyler in Lafayette - 6:45-8:00 PM. We are going to talk more about this God who is so cool and so worth dedicating your life quest to. You see, you never know where the next turn of life may take you - but eventually everybody's boat goes to cimetaro.

Hope to see you there.