Time…

Yesterday was one year since we lost our oldest son. It had me thinking of the effect time has on our lives. Some are good, some are bad, and some things are just unfortunate. 

Today, I am personally thinking more about time’s effect on grief. It’s been a year now. It still hurts to see pictures or videos of my son, but it is getting better. I enjoy thinking about the good memories we had together and even looking through my phone’s camera roll. For a long time, the automatic iPhone memories were a terrible reminder of his last day. These days it stings less, but the sting is still there. I find myself thinking more about the good days with him vs his last day. 

When thinking of the ways that time changes our lives, it isn't always for the bad either. For instance, when you create good habits, over time they produce positive changes. Starting to exercise, eating healthier, getting involved in a church, etc. Those things all produce positive changes over time. We should strive to do these things more often. 

When I look back at the past year, I see a lot of different things in myself. I was grieving, but I led my family with strength and direction to make things as good as they could be. I started a business, started writing this blog, got a lot deeper in my faith, and made some diet and exercise changes for the first time in many years. Overall, I am happy with how I have handled the past year. Sure I made mistakes and could have done a lot of things better, but overall, I believe I did well.  My life is still hard, but I am controlling what I can to make things the best they can now and in the foreseeable future.

If I go back farther in my life, I can see how I have grown as a man. I have started to gain some wisdom. I am no longer fearful of failure. I am much more open to new ideas. I can basically see how I transformed from a broken teenager to a man who strives to live my life with integrity. I had a lot of circumstances, failures, mistakes, terrible decisions, accidents, you name it in my life, but none of those have defined me. I have strived to rise above every challenge that has been given to me over the years, although with varying success. 

So what about you? How has your last year been? Have you made yourself better or worse? What about five or ten years back? I have learned that honestly looking back at your life can teach you so much about why you are where you are and what type of person you are. Maybe you see where you did the bare minimum and things aren’t great now. Or maybe you made some terrible decisions that still affect you today. Maybe you did mostly everything right and you are rocking it these days. No matter which example is you, it is worth looking back and learning from your past. 

Without learning from the past, we are doomed to repeat it. You can see the evidence of that in our society over the past several years. There are a lot of people who need some history lessons out there. 

The same goes for our own lives. You don’t want to keep making the same mistakes over and over do you? Wouldn’t you rather identify your problem areas and work on fixing them? Look back over your life and figure out where you need to grow. Be honest, don’t judge yourself or have a spirit of righteousness. Truly give yourself the gift of the rest of your time on earth being the best it can be. I am sure you won’t regret it.