Tick Tock, the Clock Won't Stop

 

“I feel very melancholy. And I can’t shake it.”

These words from my friend came over the phone as we were discussing the memorial service we both had attended earlier in the day. The service was for a 96-year-old man who had been our pastor years before when we were both much younger. Neither of us had attended the church for some twenty years, and he had been retired for at least that long. 

I understood her feelings and expressed to her why I thought she was feeling them. The church sanctuary held quite a few people who had been members of the church at the same time we were. Couples who raised their children alongside ours, who now were grown and raising their own children. Middle aged people who were children and teenagers under the ministry of this pastor but had moved on in their lives.

I pondered the situation, “You know, my sister and I have shared how when we had seen our mom and dad together over the years, we felt that same way. Like ‘this is how it was supposed to be. You two together watching our kids and grandkids grow up.’” 

And it did remind me of that. My parents went through a painful and traumatic divorce when I was a teenager. They both eventually ended up in happy, fulfilling marriages with good people. However, the inner child in me always wished they could have remained together, forming the original family unit of my childhood. I loved both their spouses at the end, and wouldn’t want to take away their happiness, but I would go back in my mind to those blissful childhood days when all seemed right with my world and crave those times.

As I sat in that auditorium and gazed around at those people, I recalled some of the best years of our lives. Raising our children, building a young church, growing our families and developing friendships that have lasted literally decades. Time and distance have not changed those relationships. I mentioned all of this to my friend with the sad whisper, “We were supposed to all be together still.”

But life and events drove us apart. The details aren’t important. What is important is what happens after.  And in a word, that is change. 

I was rummaging through photo albums at my mother-in-law’s and came across pictures of my husband and myself in our first year of marriage. We were so very young. Seriously young.  Much has happened in the 45 years since those pictures were taken. So much good, some struggles, some grief. And a lot of aging. So much aging.

As I look at the pictures, I grieve for the youth that I’ve lost. I was so young, as I mentioned. And small, I might add. So, so small. My hair was thick, and dark, and my skin so smooth. What I would give to experience the vibrancy of that youthful young girl. I never anticipated the melting of years to be as quick as it has. 

But more than my physical appearance has changed. I have grown as a person. What I have lost in skin elasticity I have gained in wisdom gained through life experience. The years have brought a quietness, a peace, a contentedness that I did not have in my twenties. Oh, I fret about the increasing size of my jeans. On that issue I may never be content, but I am learning to like who I am a little bit more each year. 

 I pondered the people who I had spent so much time with so many years ago. 

I could close my eyes and smell playdough and coffee as we sat in each other’s kitchens. Women who I cut my teeth with on potty training and then navigated the wilderness known as home-schooling now shared pictures of their grandchildren with me. Men who stood shoulder to shoulder with John and both spiritually and literally built the church we now sat in—older but so much wiser.

Yes. Melancholy was an apt description for the feeling that coursed through me.  Looking backwards can do that. To see what was, to see what was lost. What we will not see again. 

But, as we talked, reminisced, and even celebrated the life of the servant of God who was now walking the streets of Heaven, a different perspective came to mind. 

When we leave the old, we embrace the new. The broken, worn-out body was replaced with a new, whole, perfect one. God assured us of that. (2 Corinthians 5:1-10) 

Yes, sometimes change is hard. Transitions can be painful, and we might grieve for things of the past and wish for the way things used to be. 

But one day, for all of us, the greatest change, the most miraculous transition of all will take place in us. We will never look back again, we will never grieve or mourn for the old. ‘Even so, Come Lord Jesus.’

“In the twinkling of an eye, we shall all be changed.”