A Good Life

I couldn’t help overhearing the conversation between two ladies who were sitting across from me at the doctor’s office. Although they conversed as if they were old friends, they were strangers, or so I learned as they openly discussed their current health problems and reminisced about the past.

The heavy-set woman, who was wearing a loose-fitting floral dress and a floppy hat with an upturned brim, spoke with an easy drawl, even though she was describing experiences that had been extremely hard.

As she continued to talk to the tall, thin woman seated beside her, she stared straight ahead; focusing, I assumed, on people and places of the past. She said softly, “I planned to have lots of children, but ended up with only three.” After a short pause, she offered this explanation: “I got the fibroids early.”

The gaunt but regal-looking woman whispered, “We don’t always get what we want.”

“No, but the good Lord knows what He’s doing.”

They nodded in mutual agreement and then sat in silence for a moment,as if reflecting on that truth.

When they began to talk about their childhood experiences, I smiled at them and listened openly as they described a world about which I, also a country girl, had a smattering of knowledge: butchering hogs, eating from a table loaded with the bounty of the land, going barefoot in the Spring and Summer, sleeping with windows opened and doors unlocked….

A gentle smile spread slowly across the thin woman’s face and stayed there, as she said, “It was a good life.”

The heavy-set woman chuckled. “Yes. But I didn’t know it at the time!”

As soon as she said that, I remembered reading these words of another woman: “What a wonderful life I’ve had! I only wish I’d realized it sooner.”

How true! Why, each of us would be so happy if only we’d savor the current moments of our lives.

Someday you and I, like these three ladies, will look back on this time in our life—with its challenges and stresses—and long for it again. But, we won’t get to re-live it. We’ll only be able to look back on it and wish we had realized the preciousness of people and places that have been relegated to the past. We, too, will get a faraway look in our eyes and realize, too late, that we spent far too much time complaining about our circumstances—and yearning for the next phase of our lives—instead of enjoying the blessings that were ours at that time.

If only we’d reflect on our lives and savor the moments of each day, how quickly we would acknowledge, “I have a good life.” How quickly joy and gratitude would fill us! How quickly we would echo the words of the psalmist, “Bless the LORD, O my soul; and all that is within me, bless His holy name.  Bless the LORD, O my soul, and forget none of His benefits” (Psalm 103:1, 2, New American Standard Bible). How quickly we would give thanks for all the blessings that are ours this day, this season of our lives.