Worth It
I never knew my life would turn out this way.
Growing up, I wasn’t the kind of girl who daydreamed of a high school sweetheart, planned out her wedding in painful detail, chose her babies names in advance. Nope, I had other priorities and my self at the very centre. So it never ceases to amaze me when I pause periodically to look at my life. Yup, I met my husband in highschool (LAST thing I ever saw coming! He was just supposed to be my OAC art class ‘enjoyable view’. I enjoyed the view then, and now I get to be up close and personal;) We had our grand schemes and plans of how to get rich quick (illicitly of course), how we’d “take care of it” if we got pregnant before we were “ready”, how maybe we’d get married (but who cares anyway, cuz it’s just a stupid peice of paper). Something must’ve changed on a core level, cuz that’s not where we are today. No, far from it. People around us try to write it off as “they just grew up”. You don’t grow up out of addiction. Our self-centered gene didn’t suddenly get overthrown by a rare DNA combo of philantrophy. Something bigger happened, and it rocked us to the core.
I remember the countless nights walking in the AY feild near my parents home. I’d crane my neck to peer into the vastness of space. The stars mocked me somehow; speaking a language I couldn’t understand. The wind caressed my face, but I turned away, heartbroken somehow. Longing for…something…gone unfulfilled yet again. I couldn’t get high enough.
Would it shock some who think they know me so well if they knew where I’d be today had not my world been rocked? Would they dismiss it as exxageration? Are they so sure of themselves that they think, “that sort of thing doesn’t happen to nice people like us?”. It already did. It already did.
Here I am, ten years later, and my life is the last thing I ever thought it would be. I am married, second child on the way, just completed a BA at ‘Bible College’, am living in the USA of all places, and am most certainly not living the American Dream. Don’t get me wrong, it’s not that I don’t enjoy money…it’s just not the source of my security nor my identity in life. That’s why I can be here right now, literally giving myself over to something greater than me, and doing it with joy. Somedays I wonder if I’m missing out on something, if we could be rolling in mad money right now, Gavin putting the finishing touches on the home he built with his own hands, our greyhounds rolling around on our 100 acres of land. I still have dreams that maybe someday we will have some of those simple things. But even if we don’t I know in my core that I never compromised. I know more than I did 10 years ago, with a certainty that makes some people uncomfortable, that the Lord is My Shepherd; I lack no good thing.
November 10th, 2006 at 1:49 pm
Tara, this is beautiful and simple. I love it. That’s so true - what you said about people thinking “you grew up”. But totally, it’s so much more! Life only makes sense with Jesus in it and your lives now scream Jesus! Keep on glorifying him, you’re an inspiration!
November 16th, 2006 at 4:26 pm
Beautiful!
March 18th, 2007 at 3:12 am
Dear Tara, We have not met in the flesh, yet, but I agree with your friend, Beka Hache, you are an insiration. I am overjoyed that you and Gavin did “GROW UP” into such a deep christian faith.Now you have 3 lovely children to bring up in a christian home full of love, and pure trust in Jesus,the Son of God our Lord and Saviour. I pray they will follow the example you show them. God bless you all.
March 18th. 2007. 8-11am.