a narrower path

I sat and read a letter from a friend yesterday, a real paper letter. My friend Chico has given up the internet (and has tried to get me to give it up also, to no avail); he is going back to writing real letters. Unfortunately, he got my zip code wrong on this letter so it took a month to get to me. Talk about snail mail.

Yesterday also happened to be my fortieth birthday, so as I read his letter I was reflecting a bit on the effect of these years on me. And I noticed one thing that seemed significant. As he described several dilemmas that he struggled with, and paths in life that seemed to pull him in different directions, I recalled similar struggled and feelings. But I noticed that I don't feel the same way any more. I suppose that we make choices along the way that then limit the options available to us as we get older. There can be something else, though, that might ease our anxiety about life choices (without depressing us about our lost opportunities).

Our years of trying to listen to God may put us on a narrower path. Trying certain things and being shown (sometimes quite painfully) that that is not what God created us for. Discovering other things that capture our imagination and passion and won't let us go. Finding doors opened to us that, when we step through them, make it impossible to return to our old lives.

And when we have risked so much, following God's call to us, and been carried beyond what we can manage or maintain for ourselves, then it begins to feel like our future is no longer in our hands, like the big choices are no longer ours. Like our lives are no longer ours. I'm reminded of Paul's words, "If I preach the gospel, that gives me no ground for boasting. For necessity is laid upon me. Woe to me if I do not preach the gospel!" (1 Cor 9.16) We are no longer shaping our own lives with our choices, but accepting and embracing (or desperately hanging on to) the particular life given to us.

Only let this be because we have abandoned our lives completely to our Father. It's the one way back to childhood.