by Melissa Bagley

Created on: May 31, 2008

There comes a time in everyones' life that you realize the permanence of death. I don't know if it is when you are burying someone that you love, or if it is that first Christmas alone without them that it really hits you. Someday I'm going to be gone. It makes an impact that this life is so short and tomorrow is coming faster and faster and faster. Yesterday you were a gangly teenager, wishing that you didn't have such white legs and all at once you are looking at that age spot on your arm. I once was so thin and now I'm not. My dear husband has hit that middle aged spread and so have I. The children that I wanted all of my life and lived every moment of the day for now want to go to the mall all the time instead of playing in the sprinkler with me. So, what do you do with your life when all you did with your life is about to come to a close? What is the meaning of life when the real meaning of life to you is about to move out and move away, without looking back for a second to remember all the times you laughed together? Where did all the fun times go? When did they slip away from me?

It is at this point that I am right now. I used to wonder about the meaning of my existence. I had decided that someone with thick glasses and freckles probably doesn't get married and have the children that I so desperately wanted. So what was my reason for living? I grappled with it for a long time. In time I would marry and found the joy that I wanted more than life itself. Now that joy is quickly moving away in the direction of their own lives and I am watching them go. I wonder now-what is the meaning of my life now? What will the meaning of me be when they are gone so far away?

I was born going to church. I became a Christian like learning to walk. It was a step into a place that I had been in all of my life. I was baptized as a natural result of a lifetime of living for a God that I loved and adored. The meaning of life? It centers and reflects the essence of the One I've been following all of my days. Getting married, having children, these are icing on the cake. They are the beginning of joy, but the cake itself is the walk I have with God Himself. People used to tease me about why I loved church. They couldn't understand it. I went and I go all of the time. I find reasons to be sure and make it every Sunday morning, night and Wed. night. Every time the door is open, I go. Sometimes I go when another church door opens up too.

So, how do I tie up these loose ends and decide what my meaning for life is? How do they all add up to an answer now that I have wandered all over the page? I buried my parents. I have no Christmases with them anymore. I am older and growing older. My hubby and I are not what we used to be. The kids are leaving me to go onto their lives. What will I find my life to be now? I will take the Hand of God Who doesn't get old and fat and lose His hair. I will hold onto the One who isn't going to grow up and leave me. When it is all said and done, there is the God of Today, Yesterday and Tomorrow. That is the meaning of life. Amen.

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