Sometimes I look back at my life in wonder and awe. The scenes play through my mind as a movie. Examining what I was and all that I have been through. I see the interactions with my parents and siblings. I view my mother through the eyes of a child that hides behind a clothes basket as the wicked witch in The Wizard of Oz, laughs evilly. I laugh with my father as I sit on his lap while we watch The Flip Wilson Show. I see my sisters slinging their purses at my adversary in my first schoolyard fight. The scenes glide past to High School and I view my first encounter with alcohol, and the joys and pain of social acceptance. College life moves into view and my experimentation with drugs. My first love is smiling at me and then I am crying in my mother’s arms for a love that is lost. The scenes fade to a four year stint in the Marines and to the unbreakable bonds that were formed in adversity and sharing of life. Suddenly I am viewing the birth of my first child and then the pain of divorce.
The emotions become all too real yet again. The faces and the connections swell in my heart. Joy and pain, laughter and tears, all the moments of my life come back in quiet recollection. The joy has become magnified now, and the sorrow has become more bittersweet, as I view the goodness that God imparted through it all. I see the boy that once hid, grow into a man that moves forward and faces adversity. The heart swells with thankfulness for all of my life, not just what was then perceived as good.
A new chapter in my life has begun. Again what I thought was adversity and heartbreak, has become the greatest gift of all. As the clouds of another divorce give way to the brilliance of the blessing contained within, I fall to my knees in praise. As God brings me back together with my first wife in a wondrous relationship, I again see the goodness He has given me in all of my life. As I collapse to my knees and look to the heavens, I am impelled to exclaim;
Daddy, how unbelievably good you are!
Psalm 34:8 (The Message)
Open your mouth and taste,
open your eyes and see,
how good God is.
Blessed are you who run to him.
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