Ten Year Reunions and Evaluating Success

There are certain occasions that become, willingly or not, times to evaluate ourselves and what we've done in our lives. Birthdays and New Year's, for example, are obvious candidates for reflecting on the good and the bad, the successes and failures, of the previous year. This also turned out to be the case in the weeks leading up to my ten year high school reunion this Saturday.

During those weeks, I found myself faced with a continuous decision to make. Should I mourn the fact that I'm not exactly where I expected to be ten years ago in terms of a career and a family? Should I look back on those years primarily as a time when I should have achieved more? For a moment, I considered letting such negativity, along with the belief that the existence of Facebook has made reunions a bit redundant, prevent me from going at all. 

The second option, the more difficult one, was to acknowledge that life rarely goes how we imagine it to when we're teenagers. At the same time, it was to strive to be grateful for the exciting experiences I've had and the wonderful people I've met in the last ten years. It was to be thankful for the fact that I'm on my way to entering a career that I hope will be challenging and fulfilling and will allow me to make a small contribution to the world and the people in it. It was to let go of regret, of unrealistic expectations, of attempting to control every facet of life. 

More than that, choosing the second option led me to reconsider how to evaluate success. Should success really be measured in raises and promotions, in new cars and expensive wardrobes, or in how well we have treated others and been a positive force in their lives? These things don't have to be in opposition to each other. Often, the best way to care for the people we love is by advancing in our jobs and supporting them monetarily. What it comes down to are where our priorities lie. Are people more important to us, or things? God (or at least living morally), or money? Money isn't a bad thing on its own. Neither is having pride in the quality of work we do. But it is when we put material gain and selfish ambition at the center of who we are and how we interact with people that we begin to lose our perspective on what it is to be humans made in God's image.

Yup. That's me.

I like to think that I chose the second option more often than the first in the weeks before my reunion, with all the re-evaluations of success that came with it. I ended up having a great time on Saturday night. (It probably helped that so many people in my graduating class have always been nice and easy to get along with.) The reunion reminded me that we ultimately get to determine how we evaluate our pasts and fill our futures with meaning. We can feel sorry for ourselves, regretting that we didn't get the things we wanted when we wanted them. We can set ourselves up for a lifetime of perceived disappointments and feel like we got less than we deserved. Or we can try our best to be thankful for the road that God has led us down, learn from the missed opportunities when we could have loved God and neighbor more, and look forward to where we will be in our lives by the time of our next high school reunions. “The choice,” as my middle school principal used to say every morning, “is yours.”

For my Grandparents, and for All the Saints

As I was helping my dad carry some furniture out of my paternal grandparents' house a few months ago, my mind kept returning to one thought:  It's strange not to hear my grandma whistling. Since her passing this March, the house had felt empty to me. No longer was it filled with her loud, constant whistling that had echoed through the rooms. Often, it was hymns and spiritual songs, the same kind of music that she would play on her organ when I was a kid. It was apparent to us how much she loved music, and as a child I loved listening to it. 

Though my grandma's passion for music was perhaps the most outward expression of my grandparents' faith, I had experienced it in other ways as well. It was rare for them to miss a Sunday service at the local church they had attended diligently for several decades; it was at their urging that my siblings and I were often forced out of bed by my parents to join them. Copies of the Bible could be found in almost every room of their house, of practically every size and translation you could imagine. 

But when I was a kid, I didn't care about stuff like that. Sure, I loved my grandparents a lot, but the music and the Bibles, the sayings of grace before meals and the occasional references to God or Jesus Christ, were just the background to family visits. I was more interested in making sure I ate as much of my grandma's homemade apple pie as I could than talking to them about their beliefs. Even as a “born again” in high school, I didn't think of them as individuals who had had their own spiritual journeys and experiences, with unique wisdom and insights about God that I could learn from. They were simply my grandparents. 

By the time I came back to Christianity last year, my grandpa had passed, and my grandma was very ill. I couldn't remember having a single conversation with either of them about God. And I regretted that. I felt like I had taken their stable faith for granted as a child and young adult. I was convinced that I had lost out on some wonderful opportunities for bonding and learning from them as Christians. 

After my grandma's passing in March, I was blessed to acquire many of the Bibles, hymnals, and religious objects that had helped make their home the place of love and warmth that it was. Leafing through the Bibles, I noticed a few bookmarks, dog-eared pages, underlined passages, margin notes, and references to particular verses. There weren't too many of these; I got the impression that they had really meant to highlight their favorite verses and passages. Almost immediately, I realized what I had in front of me. This was my chance to talk to them, to find out what really mattered to them, what drove them to live out their faith day by day. For the next few hours, reading the verses they had underlined and commented on, I finally got to have that conversation with my grandparents that I had wanted. I like to think I learned a lot about them that day, about their relationship with God, about the comfort and peace they received from Him, about why they chose to live and love as joyfully and passionately as they did. 

Just like that, any feelings of guilt or regret I had harbored about my grandparents were gone as a result of this gift that God had given me. Those feelings were replaced by a strong sense of gratitude and hope toward the saints that I think we can all share as Christians. Gratitude, for the love and faith that they so often displayed while they were with us, and for the sure knowledge that they are now under the personal care of our Lord and Savior. Hope, that we will be able to live up to the example of Christian discipleship that they set for us, and that one day we will be able to continue our conversations with them in a place where death will never again be able to separate us.