We tumble from one stage of life to another. A while back I tripped and fell on my face on the lawn. No damage. But I’m not referring to that kind of falling.
Recently, one of my brothers retired, because of cancer. He lost his career, his work friends, his staff, his vocational identity. I’m thinking of that.
He is tumbling.
I’m thinking about how we are all blown along by the maturing process, by our own developing — our progressing or our deteriorating — our bio-chronological tumbling, our head-over-heals bounding down the aging hill.
Me too, tumbling, through the ages.
In contrast to my brother and I, one of my daughters was recently accepted in a Phd program. But this is also a tumble, a roll, a bounce into a new level of professionalism, responsibility — and debt. She will choose to do this or not — she probably will — but looking back she will see that she didn’t, just choose. Her skills, her economic status, her parents modeling, the opportunities afford her by race, nationality and era — much of what she is experiencing lies far beyond her control.
I’m not saying we don’t choose some stuff. I’m just saying that we grow up, have opportunity — or don’t — and end up doing things –or not anymore — and it’s a bit of a mystery how and why it all goes down, as it does, so fast, so hard, so soft, to us, so uncontrolled.
My mom will soon go into assisted living in her retirement community. My mom is literally being tumbled by age and dementia into another reality. The move apart from my dad will be very difficult for her, and my dad. My father mused the other day, “How did we get here? It’s gone so fast.”
“How in the heck did we get here, all of us?”
What upheaval, what shifting tectonic plate, what smoking super volcano, what giant, crashing meteor, what mass extinction in the past, what new species lasting to the present created our story? What forces operating on us have rendered our racked, rifted, royal, rattled, ragged reality?
We are tumble weeds.
We live on and within the tumble dry cycle.
We uproot like trees in rain storms and tumble into the next street, the next house, the next new era, the next iteration of our maturity, our vivacity, our decline. And in the end, we will tumble, trip and fall into our graves.
I’m apprehending this: We choose less than we think.
And yet, in this, even in this reality turbulence, I find my North Star, my ever fixed point, my sheltered home and my final bed to rest in.
God is not missing. There are many forces operating, but God is present too, and he has our backs.
In Him, in powerful God, with the powerful name of Jesus the King — within his love and care and compassion — we live and move and have our tumbled, bumbled, humbled being.
Thrive! 