It was 4 am when I awoke thinking about time; how much time has passed, how much time we think we have, and what the truth really is.
A talk show celebrity, Kelly Ripa, is approaching her 50th birthday this year and was remarking about how amazing that is, etc. I agree with her - 50 years is half a century, a remarkable amount of time for anyone.
So I lay in bed calculating how many days there are in 50 years. It's 18,262 days! By the time I reach my 63rd year, I will have had 23,010 days; 4,748 more days than Kelly simply because I'm older but she could surpass me if she lives beyond me. Or not. There is no way to know for certain.
Then I thought about just one day, how long it is, how quickly it goes by, and how some people never live beyond a day. We cannot comprehend how much time we have been given by our Creator or why this is.
On a lighter note, Kelly Ripa is a favorite of mine; I enjoy her bubbly personality, quick wit, and hair style. I would say that Kelly leads a normal life for her, but not an ordinary one. As a celebrity, she has received many awards throughout her career as an actress, a talk show host, dancer, etc., and she lives in a milli-mansion. Normal for Kelly is not normal for me, and my life is more ordinary than hers. I tune in to watch her as often as I can because she brightens my day.
Beyond thinking about Kelly Ripa, my mind took me back to long ago places when I was young and for the most part, care-free, and as far as I know, leading a normal life in a big family in a small town. But what is normal? I now know for sure that some of the ways I grew up were considered not normal but I could not have known this at the time because it seemed normal to me.
"Normal" is different for everyone, something I noticed throughout my childhood, and notice more as an adult when visiting others' homes or environments. No two families or persons do anything the same as the other.
I had girlfriends whose moms ran a tight ship; a place for everything and everything in its place, while another's mom let the housework slide - dishes piled high in the sink and on the counter tops, junk strewn here and there...my Mom was neat so we had to be neat too, and still are.
If I could go back to what was normal for my 8-year-old self, what would I say to her about what she thought was normal? Was it normal to go barefoot most of the time? I did not like wearing shoes. Still don't. I took my dislike to a whole new level by challenging myself to see how black and dirty I could get the bottoms of my feet during the summer by walking on the hot, sticky, tarry pavement. I would find an especially sun-softened area and stand on it until my feet were coated with tar, then walk around attracting additional dirt, grass, and gravel. At the end of the day, I would check to see how well I was doing; the blacker the better, and I didn't want to ruin my progress by bathing. Was this normal? To my young self, I would say yes. For someone else, maybe not.
What about forcing a young girl to stand in the pouring rain with a book of matches, telling her she must get the garbage in the burn barrel lit and burning before she could come in the house? Is this normal? To my 8-year-old self I would now say it's completely not normal! You just did not know it. It was a different another time in life.
One thing I do know now is this: "There is a time for everything under Heaven," and we have been given as much time in any day as the next person, however the day ends, to do whatever the next thing in front of us is, whether normal or not; good or not.
Also, "God has made everything beautiful for its time. He has planted eternity in the human heart, but even so, people cannot see the whole scope of God's work from beginning to end." (Ecclesiastes 3 for both quotes.)
For me, time is beautiful; life is beautiful; a space which has a beginning with an unknown end. It makes sense how God would put eternity in the human heart: a desire and longing for something different from what is. What has been put in by God cannot be taken out but it can be violated by making it what it isn't, such as misusing time, whether normal or not; good or not.
While Kelly Ripa leads a more exciting life than I do, she and I have the same 24-hour day, and in my ordinary, normal, sometimes not normal way, it's up to me today to make the most of it, however it ends, especially during these challenging times.
PICTURED: An ordinary, normal day at home with family.
