I started this post shortly after the events described below from the spring of my 50th year. It was to be my first post where I describe the thinking behind starting this website/blog. But while the thoughts were accurate and even appropriate, I didn’t feel the timing was. So, the post got filed, the name of the blog got changed and looking back over the last three years of P.O.C. I can see God’s direction there. But now, three years later, having time to live in the lesson He gave me, it felt right to revisit, update and publish. I don’t know what God had planned when He first gave me “Just a Thought” almost twenty years ago or what He intends for this site. As for me, if I can help you find the true peace and freedom I have found, then this will have been worth it. But you must remember… Before that peace came the Truth of Christ! Between Christ and that peace came Faith, “walking in that Truth.” Once you have that, you need nothing else. It was this same peace that I wrote about in “Ma’s Final Message.” So, on to the post I started three years ago:
From a young age I viewed my life not from how long I lived it, but how I lived it. I felt no different the day after I graduated high school then the day I entered it. Was I more mature? Yes. Less free spirited? Also, yes. However, I always wanted to enjoy life in the best way possible at the time. I did and still do buy into the idea “you are only as old as you feel.” Thank You Ma!
Some people never feel as old as they are, and how they live tends to reflect that. Others sadly feel years ahead of their actual age, and that too is reflected in how they live their lives. While I had friends that were devastated by turning 30, 40, and… you know, I never was much into that kind of thing; I was happy to be entering into another year I could enjoy life. That said, as I approached 50 I became increasingly aware that I was entering a stage where I had lived longer than I would have to live out.
The math would inevitably cross my mind when interacting with those 20 years older than me as well as with those 20 years younger. Too frequently these passing thoughts would linger and take away from the opportunity to enjoy the life that was present at that time. Then, in my 50th year, my annual check-up produced a lab result that raised questions. Often these results without accompanying symptoms mean cancer. This event was a reminder that the fact I had lived long enough to do the math that said I was “over the hill,” was a blessing. Further, what kind of a dummy would spend their last week, if they knew, focused on or even thinking about their life not having another 50 years in it? Another life quote rang loudly in my brain “we could all die tomorrow.” If we knew, who would waste that day worrying about things that would never come?
So, you can call that a mid-life crisis if you want, but at 50 I did not panic or change the way I lived my life. I still enjoyed life like a 20-something, and even “play” quite regularly in ways many watching consider childlike. I had simply taken notice of the “math,” until reality came in the form of a lab test and said, “you don’t have all the data.” These results, or even their possible implication, provided no information about the sand in my particular hourglass, only that it was held by God and I couldn’t see it. This being true, what was I doing?
It is now three years, two biopsies and an MRI later and that lab result just keeps getting worse. No symptoms have manifested, and these further tests show nothing. I go in for another MRI next week and who knows what, if anything, that will show. (Update: seven years, two biopsies, one Fusion biopsy, a saturation biopsy, four MRI’s and two genetic screenings. Still nothing) What I do know is that before this situation arose I spent far too much time looking at how little life I had left (as if I knew). What I also know is that since I have lived in peace knowing that none of us knows the time we have left, but what we do know is that we are blessed with exactly the time God allotted us. If every hair on my head is counted and God is outside of time, then He knows my future and that is good enough for me. Additionally, if we truly believe all is God’s, and I do, then that includes my time on earth, whether it is 9, 59 or 90 years. So, I am happy to have Him do with it what He will and when He is done, I will be even happier, as a “Believer” in Christ, to begin a life whose days cannot be counted.
© 3/8/2018 Scott A Caughel