The End from the Beginning

Some of my children have urged me to start blogging. I have resisted for several years and instead just enjoyed their stories and those of a few close friends. Events that have transpired recently have kind of shoved me off the fence of indecision and I'm going to at least take a stab at it now. There are times I just need to say something and, as life would have it,  my house is often completely empty. I guess one of the wonderful things about blogging is that if you don't like it or find it interesting, you just don't bother to read it and no one is any the wiser. Feel free!

Writing a blog about the second half of life kind of screams for a little insight into the first half. I think that this second half, which has come to fascinate me so much, has been shaped, if you will, by the choices and paths I have taken in the first. The biggest ones are what make me who I am...my relationship with God and subsequently the mate I chose to spend this life with. Both were very life altering decisions and neither was undertaken lightly. I came to saving faith in Christ as a teenager but did not have much opportunity for growth or discipleship. I was raised by a single mother and am the oldest of two children. Church was never a big part of my growing up. I studied the Bible quietly on my own and honestly got little benefit from that endeavor. At least that's what I thought at the time. Meeting the man who would be my husband was also critical to the formation of this story. That man, who was just a young Airman, stationed at what was Bergstrom AFB, was busy doing what he still does so well, caring for the needs of others. He had taken on the role of mentoring fatherless teen boys who lived near the base, one of whom just happened to be my brother. They met in the home of one of the other military families and it fell to me to retrieve my brother for dinner one evening. The phone was busy (remember that, before call waiting!?) so I just walked the few blocks instead. The door opened to reveal a veritable herd of boys strewn about the living room floor playing games, mothers serving up snacks and across the room stood Airman Brown. Our eyes met (are you hearing the sappy movie soundtrack yet?) and the rest, as they say, is history. Our courtship began, much to my little brother's dismay. Courtship? Did I say that? I don't think anyone used that term in the 70's, not the 1970's anyway! Well, even if we never used that word, that's what we had. A long-term...really long-term, dating relationship with the end goal being marriage. Did I mention I was fifteen!? I didn't think so. That factor meant that three years had to pass before the wedding bells could ring. That three years seemed like forever. But that time allowed for a great deal of discipleship, talking and sharing about just what kind of family we hoped to create. We had the privilege of learning all we could about Godly marriage. We took classes, read books and surrounded ourselves with other Christian couples so that we might be as prepared for a marriage that honored God as possible. While waiting three years to get married was not a lot of fun, we have never been sorry about any of the time and effort we put into preparing for our future. It has paid huge dividends, which we still benefit from today. So a month after turning eighteen and graduating from high school, we began this wonderful journey together. Our wedding, while all we hoped it would be, was a pretty sad little, low budget affair, the harbinger of things to come. Since we were each the oldest of our single parent families, leaving home at the end of high school was pretty much a given. While both good students, college was just not in the budget. The Air Force provided us with a good start but living on little would continue to be a challenge in life. In fact, nothing would be easy. We had several strikes against us already, given our parents' histories, birth order and relative poverty. We were nothing but hopeful, however, as we looked to our future. We'd started out by trusting God and that would come to be the gold standard throughout. The adventure continued, and I'll write about that now and again. Hopefully this brief back story will make it easier to relate to some of the things I write about in the future. I've learned a lot about God, my spouse, our children and myself. I've watched friends navigate these turbulent, empty nest/middle age waters. Some have done very well. Others, not so much. I am encouraged and committed to honoring God in this second half of life even more than when we undertook to begin our life together all those years ago. I'm not finished being a mother. The role just changes a bit as children fly from the nest. I'll write about some of those challenges, too. I am very much looking forward to developing anew that sweet courtship that started this story so long ago. Feel free to read along now and then.