Wishing Away Your Life

When I was in Junior High, I remember saying to my Aunt Fae, "I wish I was in High School." What she said to me became one of the foundational principles that has formed character in me. She said, "Brenda, Don't wish away today. Be all here in the present. High School will come soon enough. Be all here, each day of your life." I thought about what she said, and put it into practice in my life.

We tend to "wish for High School" in a lot of ways. When we get to High School, we wish we were in College or wish we had a job...we wish we were married, we wish we had children, we wish our children were older, then we wish they were out of the house...grandkid...retirement........then, we die. We have wished our life away and didn't live in the moments we were given.

Looking back now, living in the present, caused me to take advantage of the moments I was given, both the good ones and the hard ones. I learned to face the difficult times rather than ignore or resent them. When my children were young and woke up night after night because they needed to be nursed, they had a bad dream, or had the flu and were puking every hour throughout the night, I realized that I had two choices in how I could respond. I could either accept my circumstances and embrace the moments with a good attitude, or ignore, get angry and irritable about them and wish this stage of life with my children away. Those long, sleepless nights when my children were cried, I would rock them and quietly sing to them, sometimes for hours. I was so tired and at the end of myself, the tears would come easily, streaming down my face, and I praised Jesus with my songs. That was all I had to give.

The hard times have become some of the most precious memories and growing times for me. I chose not to "check out" of the present, and wish for future. Instead, I chose to worship God through those hard circumstances. Those are the times, when I learned to lean on Him for strength when, I didn't have any strength left.