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By Gayle Sheller
timbrel, January-February 2005
With or without New Year’s resolutions, winter is a time of reflection. Reflection invariably leads me to think of all the work not done, the friends I miss, the personal growth hardly begun. If I managed to sit somewhere during the holiday season, there may well be a list of resolutions, some of them changes, some of them reminders of commitments already made.
Such a list seems to be tinged by regret, the “I’ll-do-it-better-differently-for-certain-syndrome.” But sometimes, if I sit still long enough, if I don’t react to all the voices in my head, if I wait on God’s goodness, the list evolves into one of deep gratitude. To arrive at that gratitude rather than reactive regret takes deep stillness and inner quiet and paying attention to the moment.
My faith teaches me that all of my life is a marvelous gift. Given all the choices possible, and few of us live with limited choices, I recognize that the very richness of options can set in motion a whirl of “what if” questioning. If I enter that whirl, I can get caught in a replay of the past or in some sort of anxiety about the future. Since the past cannot be relived and the future is unknown, I am spending my life in futility and apart from the bountiful grace of God. I have lost connection to the very Source of my life.
We each make our choices with the best information and heart we have at the time. Sometimes we follow our hearts when our heads have other ideas. Sometimes our heads bring unruly feelings into line with what matters most to us. Sometimes we find that miraculous balance of head and heart and we choose with confidence—only to discover God leading us down another path altogether.
My life is a typical case in point: I was absolutely certain when I was a senior in high school that: one, I would not marry before I was 30-something; two, I would be an English professor living in France; and three, I would have two children, maybe. I was on the track my parents, my teachers, even my friends and I could imagine for me.
Then, on the night of my high school graduation, I met the seminary summer intern who had come to our church where my father was senior pastor. A year and a half later, we got married. I didn’t go to France, although I did finish a degree in English literature and one week later gave birth to our first son. Nineteen months later, we had a second son; six years later, a third son; and five years after that a fourth son, this one a foster son from Nigeria. After the birth of our third son, I began to explore training for pastoral ministry. I was soon ordained and joined my husband in team ministry at the church where he served. Through paths I couldn’t imagine, I’m now in my 10th year as pastor to a Mennonite congregation across town from the Church of the Brethren group I first served.
Had you told me I could follow a pastoral call and live in the same house for nearly 30 years, I would have scoffed.
Now I’m facing 2005 knowing more choices are ahead. I’ll be leaving the first house we bought 29 years ago, where we raised our four sons, to move nearer those sons and their wives. I’ll be going back to school to change professions, at least as far as I can see now. Such a transition tempts me to go back, sift through past choices, see if there’s a path not taken that might get chosen now.
Yet, no matter what choices I make, I am a different person because of where I have been. I have been shaped by the children raised, the husband married, the work done, the friends loved. I bring all of my experiences, the good and the difficult, the joyful and the deeply sad, to whatever path I walk. There is no undoing or re-doing, only giving self over to God.
“How hard that must be, Mommy,” one of my daughters-in-law said to me about leaving our house of nearly 30 years. Yes, but no. We made the choice knowing we left other choices behind. Every door opened, every window closed means a list of possibilities foregone. Even my attempt to measure my decisions by what brings me the most life, or what is most born of love, gets challenged, for I can see much life and much love in many choices.
Parker Palmer, a wonderful Quaker writer, speaks often of the burden and the gift of having choices. Staying in the place we now live, the house and town where we have raised our children and done most of our professional work, where we have two churches and friends we love, would make perfect sense. And going to be near our sons and their families, moving into a city rich in opportunity and culture, near other church communities we can love, to a place where we will be the elders of a multi-generation family, also makes perfect sense.
Could I imagine ever regretting either choice? Yes. Will I? Not if I practice gratitude. Do I ever wonder, what if? Of course. Could I say what I’d change? Not close.
God only asks two things of us: to love God with our heart, mind, soul, and strength, and our neighbors as ourselves. The shape of such life takes as many forms as there are children of God. Being still, knowing God’s love, and simply seeing all the life that’s been given to me in spite of my plans leaves me sighing deeply, smiling a little, and lost in gratitude.
Not a bad place from which to make my next choice.
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