Daily Archives: December 20, 2007
Life’s choices
Have you watched your fill of holiday movies this season? Everyone has their favorites. Mine include The Sound of Music, though I’m still not sure why this is considered a Christmas movie — does it have anything to do with the holidays? Doesn’t it take place over the summer? National Lampoon’s Christmas Vacation is another classic. But my very favorite is The Family Man. If you’ve never seen it, I highly recommend you do.
What I fear more than anything else is that I will reach the end of my life with a mountain of regrets. Everyone has something they wish they had done differently. I’m not really talking about the little things; I’m referring to life-changing decisions. I worry my bad decisions will outweigh the goods ones, so much so that my life’s triumphs will be unnoticed in the face of blaring defeat.
The Family Man looks at one decision and shows a man how different his life would be had he taken the other path. I wonder what my life would be if I had chosen differently. If I hadn’t married Rick … if we had no children … if we had moved to Boston insted of New York … if … if … if …
I think about me before these decisions. I was a hippy artist in high school and a globe-trotting humanitarian in college. I was assertive, confident, even cocky. I was involved in everything. I was an actress and a player. It seems a lifetime ago in someone else’s backyard. Have I left who I am behind? Is that who I am or is who I am now the real me? Have I made the right choices?
Everytime I start thinking this way, a song from church echos in the back of my mind. It slowly crescendos until its words are all I hear. “My Savior loves. My Savior lives. My Savior’s always there for me. My God He was. My God He is. My God He’s always gonna be!”
The same God I served in Bosnia and Switzerland and Indiana and Philadelphia is the same God I serve now. He is living and loving and always by my side.
In the movie, Tea Leoni’s character talks about these what if’s. She wonders what her life would be like if she hadn’t married her husband … “and then I realize I’ve just erased all the things in my life I’m sure about.” I love that line.
Life would definitely be different. But it doesn’t matter because the same God I served then I serve now and He is the one in control. He knows I need what I’m sure about. He knows our best purposes and will ensure we fulfill them.
