Living Life On Sleepless Nights
Before I post my potentially incoherent and likely ridiculous rambling session, I want to apologize to those of you who have chosen to put yourself through this. It’s not that well written and it’s certainly not all that profound, but hopefully it will at least make some sense, in spite of being the result of my inability to fall asleep tonight, this morning, or whatever you call that time just before sunrise.So I have once again spent another good portion of my time thinking about how I could have lived my life differently, knowing what I know now. I must confess, I have quite elaborate plans at how it would work, from what I read, who I would hang out with, to even what I would wear. What it comes down to is that I recognize how I could have spent my time over the last twenty-two years and I see how it could have been so much better, for me, for everyone around me, and for the Kingdom.
But that’s not going to happen. The next time I wake up, it’s not going to be January of 1996, May of 1998, or July of 2001. I’m not getting another shot at this. I know how many mistakes I’ve made and my enemies (none of whom are flesh and blood) have a grand old time making sure I remember them in the highest detail.
Maybe I find myself in this place as often as I do not because I know what I could have done and wish I had a chance to make things “right,” but because I know I can’t change the past. Maybe it’s because it’s easier to think about doing the impossible than it is to let myself be changed now and live life differently in the present. Because that is possible, that’s something I can do. That’s real. I know I’ll never see a different history, but I am sure that I have a future that’s full of both pitfalls and possibilities, becuase the future depends entirely on the present.
I don’t want to make things worse by shifting from wanting to change the past to dwelling on an unwritten future, but I’m getting a clearer picture now of how, while the past is unchangeable, the future holds a lot of promise if I’d simply live a genuine Christ-like life starting in the moment, in the present. I can’t change what I’ve already done, but I can change what I’m doing, and that makes for a future I wouldn’t trade for anything.