Just One Change

Have you ever thought about how your life played out? Gone down that road of “What if?” I think those of us who have many more years behind us than in front would feel blessed to have had the life we had. When I review my life, there are many good memories that I enjoy thinking about and sharing. Certainly, some periods involve pain and growth in my faith. Our life experiences are pieces of the puzzle of who we have become.

None of us has lived in complete isolation; people around us have influenced our lives in various ways. As students in a classroom, we had tests where the results determined our grades. Those tests prompted us to study, and they also showed us how successful our studying had been. Life events, both positive and negative, also tell us how we are progressing in life. Temptations are a part of the growth process. Some are minor, while others can be life-changing. In Matthew 4, Jesus is tested while in the wilderness by the devil.

Those verses in the Bible are not there only to show that Jesus was and is perfect, but for us to understand that Satan will bring temptations into our lives as well. I heard it said that a life traveled with Satan can take only one step to return to God. That is a powerful message, but it must be understood that Satan will try even harder with temptations to get you back until your faith becomes your strength to not even give them any consideration.

So, what about “just one change” and what is my point? When I think back to when we were living in the Heights and my thoughts of tomorrow were of the only things I knew. What would have happened if the house we lived in had not been sold to be demolished, or if my parents had managed to buy it? It seems like my whole life would have been different. Fast forward to my senior year in high school, what if Pat and I had not broken up and we had gotten married? What if I had become an architect and never gotten involved with computers?

We all have experienced “forks in the road” that we never realized while living our lives going forward. Although we have experienced difficult times that we wish we had not, those moments likely shaped us, enabling us to prevent or manage greater challenges more effectively. Problems early in our marriage when we learned more about our mate and how to better show our love, which provided a foundation for future years.

When I look back at my life and see it as a huge puzzle, I see pieces that appear as corner-pieces, others as edge pieces, and then those crazy looking pieces that can only fit one place. Companies that make puzzles have a stamp cutter for the puzzle, and then overlay a picture that can be anything. Our life is lived out one piece at a time, which produces the puzzle at the end. The question is, “How much of that puzzle was under God’s guidance?”

We all have things in our lives we wish had gone differently, but are there things that occurred afterward that you would not want to give up that would not have happened? “Just One Change” could have changed so much of our lives.