#15 A Child's Intuition

I've been reading the 'Jesus Storybook Bible' with my son a few nights a week.  It's a sampler of well-known Bible stories, but it finishes every story off with a forward-looking message.  Always something to do with God's rescue plan and the Rescuer that would come to save us all.  So far I haven't said anything about who the Rescuer is and every time we read another story, my son expects that this time the story will reveal the identity of 'the Rescuer'.  After reading about Rachel and Leah and God's blessing on Leah, in that 'the Rescuer' would come from her family, we had this conversation:

Me:    "Oh, I wonder when the Rescuer is going to come.  It's taking a really long time."
Him:   "I know when he is going to come."
Me:    "When?"
Him:   "At Christmas.  And I think I know who the Rescuer is."
Me:    "Oh - who is it?"
Him:   "It's God."
Me:    "God's sending the Rescuer..."
Him:   "Yes."
Me:    "God's sending Himself as the Rescuer?"
Him:   "Yes.  God is the Rescuer."
Me:    "Hmm. {slackjawed}  Well I guess we'll have to wait and see."

#14 My Twenties

A lot happened in the last decade.  I went from dating a girl to marrying her to having 2 kids.  I finished school, then decided to become a teacher, then changed my mind to engineer, then back to teacher, then went back to school again.  I spent 8 summers landscaping.  I found a great job that I'm still doing.  I lived in Saskatchewan, Montreal and Gatineau.  From 'self-absorbed' to 'in love' to 'self-absorbed in love' to everything it is to be married to fatherhood.  From faith to doubt to doubting but seeking faith to faith with nagging doubts.  From being in great shape to getting lazy and back to getting in shape.  Everyone around me has changed, too.  It's been an amazing and tumultuous decade; one that saw me make all sorts of hard and important decisions; one that saw me laughing at how I'll never learn to stop saying "I'll never..."; one where I learned to be friends with my family and make more family out of friends.
I argue maybe 10% as much as I did.  I am never as angry as I used to be.  Anxious and mad are no longer my default moods.  I completely love being domesticized now.  But I still lack discipline or a real social life.  And what comes out of my mouth continues to be my greatest error.  And MXPX still makes me feel rebellious and young.  We change, we stay the same.
I'm thankful for the last 10 years, but I've gotta say I'm looking forward to my thirties.  I know we never stop 'becoming' ourselves, but it's nice to be comfortable with the notion of 'being' myself for awhile.  Happy Thanksgiving and goodbye twenties.

#13 Home

The cool waters and sandy beach lay steps from a comfortable cottage.  But after 1 day in our vacation spot, I started to worry about being there for 7 days.  Maybe I was bored, finding it hard to entertain small kids for so many hours, and having a hard time without AC during the hottest week of the summer.  But perhaps I was also missing the peace that comes with being at home, in your own space.  Within a few days, our daughter developed a fever and we decided to head home for a night of cool and comfortable sleep. Everyone seemed rather happy and relieved to be home.  It takes leaving a refuge to realize it is so.
Home is where the heart is.  I belong to this space and it belongs to me.  And of course, when the whole family is there, in their home, it feels full.  We'll go back for a few more days of fun in the sun, but to me it's never really a vacation if I'm not at home.

#12 Perspective

You've never got enough of it and it's not always there when you need it, but boy am I glad for what I do have.  Perspective.  Drawing towards the end of my 20s, I've got little life experience to draw on, but when you teach teenagers, it feels like a lot.  Getting past the self-congratulatory stage where you revel in having experienced something that someone else has not yet (condescending!) is a good step.  Now experience feels less like a gem in my crown and more like a tool in my belt.  

This 'journey into thankfulness' has been more fruitful than I truly expected.  A permanent change in one's outlook is hard to come, but I feel this is occurring.  Spending time with others that are miles ahead is helpful, but deciding to be an agent of change for those that aren't has also shifted my persona.  It's easy to change what's on the outside (our persona); as others come to expect those traits, though, we are drawn into the habit of fulfilling their expectations.  Our inner person begins to align with the new persona.  I've never truly bought into the 'inner change yields outer change' as a complete model of transformation.  The reverse is rings just as true.

The new, more thankful person, cares a bit less about the irritations and a bit more about the positives.  And this is a shift in perspective - not just a different angle, but probably a wider lens.