Thinking Out Loud, Volume CCCLXXVII

I had no choice in the matter, yet if I could go back and do it all over again, this time WITH a choice, I wouldn't change a thing. I just got lucky, I guess, because babies never get to choose their parents, and for me to have been born into the home I was born into was a blessing for which I will always be grateful. We don't have to look far to see children who aren't nearly as fortunate, and when we stop to think about it, it just doesn't seem fair. Much of who I am today is a direct result of the efforts and love of my mom and dad. At first, all my decisions were made by them, then, for the next couple decades, they gradually gave me the authority to make more and more of my own, until I finally reached the point to where 100% of my decisions were made by me. When that time arrived in my life, I had a huge choice to make. The biggest and most important decision a person will ever make is the one concerning his eternal destiny. The second most important, in my opinion, is the choice of who do I want to choose as a mate....the person I want to share the rest of my life with. Sometimes I wonder just how much thought is put into that choice. At that point of a person's life, he has more than likely spent at least twenty years living with parents and will probably not stop long enough to consider the fact that that amount of time is only a fraction of the time he will be spending with this new spouse. I wonder how many young adults pause long enough to consider what kind of mom or dad this person will become. I wonder how many take the time to try to foresee what kind of life he will have as a senior citizen with this prospective spouse. Hopefully they will at least look past the lust long enough to question if this is really love. How many brides-to-be spend more time planning a wedding than they do planning for all the days and years that follow? Angie and I dated for two years before getting married, and during that pre-nuptial period, we had the time to consider all those things, but honestly, I'm not sure just how much thought we put into it. What we did do, however, was make sure about the most important consideration...was it really love. I don't know that we actually thought hard enough to contemplate the possibility that we could potentially spend triple the time with each other as we did with our parents. Thank God we made sure it was love! Speaking of love, we experienced a whole new kind of love when our two kids came along, and I can't imagine a thing that either of them could do that would make us love them any less. The love that a parent has for a child is immeasurable and eternal. Angie and I can't begin to express how much joy those two have brought to our lives. For the rest of our time on earth they will be our kids, yet both of them spent their first two decades of life with us, then moved on....just the way it's supposed to be done. We cherish every moment we get to spend with each one of them, but those moments are now simply visits, and at the end of the day, it's back to just Angie and me. None of us had any options as to what family we would be born into, no more than our own kids had in their births. Like I was saying, I feel fortunate to have the family I had, and hopefully our kids feel the same way. Fortunately for those who feel less lucky in that regards, after about twenty years you will have an opportunity to bail. The one that really matters, though...the one that is eternal, you do have a choice, and that requires a degree of wisdom. I'm reaping the rewards of choosing wisely. So is my wife. Preston