Once and Forever

Poor world.

It plods along methodically without enjoying the great events of our lives. All it knows is seconds, minutes, hours, days, months, years. It never knows bliss, heartache. We are the cogs in the Great Machinery...grinding out its history. Think of the millions and millions of marriages, the billions of  births and deaths...anonymous to its unfeeling reeling.

Poor us.

Caught up in our own little worlds, we flail this way and that, fretting about events that make no dent in the Grand Scale of things, deliriously happy over incidents that hardly change the world in the slightest, hopelessly despondent over the gnats of our tragedies.  

But there is life: our own little worlds.  It’s not unusual.  It’s the way God made us.  The joy of life is our lives themselves, supported by the people that make the casts.

My dream came true.  Daniel Sparrow wanted me for his wife.  I was sure that I wanted nothing else in life.  What else should I want?  It was too good to be true, but too true to be a dream.  I was willing to give up all for him...my career, my little dreams for our big one, my purpose for our purpose. 

I had the most wonderful, famous, successful, charming, loving Christian fiancé in the world.      Nothing could spoil my joy, I thought.   Nothing.

Poor me.

I suppose it is fortunate that we do not know the future.  It would feed our already voracious appetite for worry.  That’s the excitement of life: you never know what’s around the next corner.  It could be great opportunity, leading to brilliant success or shameful failure.  It could be tears of joy or tears of pain.

I was on top of the world as Daniel’s fiancée.  For a shining moment, I was a queen, the envy of my generation’s gender.  The news-starved music magazines crowned the eminent marriage as one would royalty’s nuptials:  the former lead singer of the Dovettes and the former lead singer of the Four Tunes now harmonizing in life.

It was quite fun, if you’ll grant me pardonable pride.  My phone rang off the hook.  Back into the center of my life came people who had drifted to its periphery...Mom, Uncle Sam, Connie, Brenda, Doris...which was more important than the media coverage, though I liked that, too.  My goodness, who wouldn’t have?    A girl’s wedding day can be the biggest day of her life. Not many get the attention of the whole country.

See what I mean?

I was so consumed with my own little life that the larger things of this world passed by like a parade on a nearby street.  The election of a new President, the worsening economy, international relations, the plight of the poor, the rising crime rate...these things were not preeminent with me.

I should have paid more attention.  Little, then, did I know that these things...one in particular...would change my life for years to come.  But as I said earlier, how could I have known?  Would I have wanted to know?