On March 10, 1974, a tiny human protested the forceful eviction from the warmth of her first home into a cold shock of light and noise.

That is to say, this past March, I turned 50. Oddly enough, checking the box labeled 50-59 doesn’t make me feel as old as the day one of my kiddos (then in middle school) exclaimed in utter disbelief, “You were born in the 1900s?!?” (emphasis unfortunately hers).

Yes. Yes, I was. Thanks for pointing it out.

Born in the 1900s, I am a member of Gen X who worked 40 hours a week during high school, began paying rent at the age of 19, and out of sheer stubborn, stupid pride, shouldered a variety of adult responsibilities and challenges that would probably cast many of today’s young people into a state of horrified catatonia at the mere suggestion. And I didn’t even have social media to document the trauma.

My earliest memories are rather vague: my great-grandfather, who shared his birthday with me, bending over and opening his arms wide; my great-grandmother lying oh-so-still in a bed; my dear Mammaw standing up from a rocking chair, sobbing with a tissue to her face, and walking toward my mama. These are shadowy pictures of great-grandparents; people who passed into eternity before I turned three.

Another early pictorial memory is of a smiling lady with short, dark hair. I recall her taking my hand in the church nursery and lead me out into the parking lot, where we were joined by a pair of trousered legs to her right. Then, the hand holding mine abruptly let go. Afterward, only vague, mixed-up images and a recollection of terror: a sense of being very, very alone and fear as a large car passed very close to me. Somehow being found by a kind older lady. Then – oh joy! – my mama bolting toward me, black hair streaming behind her.

Years later, my family filled in the gaps of this wordless memory, and I learned how close I’d come to leading a very different life. This was my brush with trafficking.

The more concrete memories began when I started school, and I won’t bore you with them. However, I am fascinated to think back on how the world has changed. For example, I began school in first grade, before mandatory kindergarten; a fact I recalled in high school when reading Bradbury’s Fahrenheit 451.

“The home environment can undo a lot you try to do at school. That’s why we’ve lowered the kindergarten age year after year until now we’re almost snatching them from the cradle.”

Excerpt from Captain Beatty’s monologue; Fahrenheit 451 by Ray Bradbury

Both my grade school experience and this quote leapt to mind the first time a younger mom confided to me during my homeschool days how she worried her 3-year-old wouldn’t be prepared for kindergarten if she couldn’t afford preschool.

How susceptible we are to suggestion…

Still, I’ve enjoyed a rich half century filled with highs, lows, in-betweens, fascinating people, and beautiful sunsets. I’ve seen certain fashions cycle through cool -> dated -> laugh-inducing -> cool.

I’ve shed tears and shared laughs; I’ve followed my heart into a cramped & stifling chamber of horrors; I’ve visited the depths of despair and found God there waiting to bring me home.

Then there are the crazy technological changes I’ve experienced, especially in telephone tech:

• The rotary dial phone with its restraining cords redeemed by the gratifying wham-ching! of the angry hang-up. Bonus: these babies doubled as formidable weapons.
• The first push button phones = less time to dial + retaining the pleasures of slamming the handset into the cradle.
• The wonders of the first cordless phone and testing the bounds of its range before losing the connection. Sometimes you could even make it to the mailbox!
• The advent of call waiting and caller ID – and screening calls.
• The first cell phones for rich folk and doctors; monstrosities about the size of a brick.
• The first time I saw a grandparent Face Timed into his grandkid’s birthday party brought a sense of Star Trek come to life.
• Then there’s today, where people who can’t even afford milk still manage to pay their monthly cell phone bill. Formidable weapon turned formidable distraction.

<Random Phone-related Memory>

Waiting tables in the 1990s: one afternoon, the hostess led a party of four to their lunch table, each member of the party clutching their 90’s-era cell phones to their ear. The dining room din quieted for a moment, followed by a single snicker. Soon, the whole room was filled with poorly-stifled laughter as the four red-faced businessfolk quickly ended their calls and hid behind their menus.

<Cut to Modern Restaurant Lunch Scene>

Several people are staring at their phones while the hostess seats a party of four who have Bluetooth earbuds in, unobtrusively finishing their calls. All four send a text from their watch before using their phones to scan the QR code and read the menu onscreen. No one notices because this has become normal. And yet, despite the physical proximity of diners remaining the same as in the 90s, there is a vast and subtle social distance surrounding each one.

<Back to the Present Reflection>

Even email, now pervaded with marketing and scams, began as something different. I remember a time one checked emails on occasion via dial-up, hoping to hear the cheery voice proclaim, “You’ve got mail!” – and the email was from an actual, flesh-and-blood acquaintance.

I could go on, but I won’t. There is so much; far too much.

Yet what amazes me most in this last half-century is how God has shored me up through it all. From the moment He sent an older lady out for air at the exact moment a strange couple had spirited three-year-old me half-way through the church parking lot through the times I rejected Him and embraced the values of secular humanism all the way to the moment I recognized those values left me with a life bereft of meaning.

He’s seen me through a long season of intense physical pain and fatigue due to chronic, intractable migraine and post-viral syndrome. What’s more, He even sustained me enough to lay an educational foundation for my three children (then homeschooled), enabling all three to graduate from a private high school with honors and do well in college. The eldest just graduated with a degree in Civil Engineering. The two young ladies will graduate in 2025 with degrees in Cellular and Molecular Biology and Pre-physical Therapy respectively.

Since I was operating in a semi-conscious pain haze during most of their homeschooled years, I cannot claim credit for one bit of it.

Even better, two have maintained their relationship with God through college and the one who ventured away seems to be returning to the Truth that sets free. Only God can do this; I got more wrong in my part than I did right.

And today, the same God is sustaining me through a new season – a season of renewed health and reduced physical pain; a season of reevaluation and reflection. A season of burying the corpses of dreams and mourning what could have been.

Even in this season of upheaval and change, God is good; my Sustainer, my Counselor, and my King. Every moment of pain has only made Him more real, and so I bless His Name for all of the last half century – the good, the bad, and the truly terrible.

In seasons of joy and wonder, I am reminded these are mere glimpses of the true joy and wonder of eternal life in the presence of my King. And in seasons of suffering, loss, or disillusionment, He prompts me to remember this world is not my home as He removes all entanglements out of His lovingkindness.

No matter what the next few years or decades bring, I know I can rest in the completed work of Jesus Christ, my King; for in Him, my sins are forgiven and my future secure. Everything else is just another stepping stone toward glory.

Therefore, since we have been justified by faith, we have peace with God through our Lord Jesus Christ. Through him we have also obtained access by faith into this grace in which we stand, and we rejoice in hope of the glory of God. More than that, we rejoice in our sufferings, knowing that suffering produces endurance, and endurance produces character, and character produces hope, and hope does not put us to shame, because God’s love has been poured into our hearts through the Holy Spirit who has been given to us.
(Romans 5:1-5)