I know not everyone's passion is to document their journey through life in blogs, articles, journals and books but I am positive everyone has at least at one time or another thought about their journey or at the very least a moment in life that defined how they now carry themselves the rest of the way. If you had the assignment of writing chapter one of an autobiography of your life, where would you begin? The most popular start would be at the very beginning, where and when you were born, a glimpse into your childhood, an introduction into your family.
Where you would begin your autobiography would reveal a lot about your character and your attitude. What point you start your autobiography would reveal more about you than any first chapter you could ever write. I know a lot of celebrities and famous people publish their biographies later in their lives and normally they will begin them with their most successful moment in their career. I have already started writing my biography, but I have yet to write the first chapter. I felt that once I completed everything else I wanted in a book about me I would have a better idea of what to write in the first chapter that would make the reader to want to keep reading.
I have drafted several chapter one's just out of curiosity of where I felt I was with that project. Each draft was completely different from the draft I wrote before it. The one thing I did noticed was that as I wrote draft after draft I went further back in time of telling the story of my journey on earth. Had I been six years old when I wrote the first chapter of my life I would of wrote about the day my family traveled from Sioux City IA to Omaha NE for a Forth of July weekend with our dad's brother's family. It would have included all the fun we had as we traveled what seemed to me to be a million miles to get there. It would have included how my brothers convinced me to watch the white lines along the interstate and count as high as I could. While I have no idea how high I counted I do remember how sick it made me and how I repaid my brothers back for that stunt by throwing up on them in the back seat of the station wagon we were traveling in.
Today if I were to write about that moment in my life it would read very different and it would begin with the tragedy of being in Omaha NE and watching as my little sister lost her life when she was backed over by my uncle's van as she rode her bike on the sidewalk crossing in front of the drive way. The trip home without her, the sadness of the tragedy, the devastating looks on the face of my brothers who no longer wanted to convince me of anything more then to stop asking questions about where our sister was and why did she not get to come home with us.
I think if any one of us tried to write our chapter one today, it would be different then an attempt to write our chapter one in two weeks from now. Life changes and life goes by so quickly that what was important or impossible to us yesterday has changed with a new tomorrow. We are rarely ready for the things in life that change the dynamics of the path we are on. While the changes are out of our control, the faith and the strength to deal with them are not. We are in control of our attitude and we are in control of how we face the things in life we would rather not face. I learned that lesson from little Amazing Gracie, my eight year old friend who died from her bout of cancer.
The four months I spent with Gracie taught me a lot about life. If you think to hard about dying you have already stopped living. Gracie fought her bout with cancer and when she knew it was terminal and she would be moving her journey from earth to heaven she never stopped fighting, she never gave up. In Gracie's words "I still have some living I would like to do". She never once let the fear of what she was facing alter the life she was living. She adjusted her life as changes in her life took place, accepting her new position in her journey and enjoying everything she could.
Prior to meeting Gracie I felt that every time I got comfortable with a new change, a new set of rules, God pulled it out from under me. I thought that was cruel and it had me struggling with my faith in God. Meeting Gracie shed a new light on the Circle Of Life for me. I am learning to accept the changes being made, making adjustments outside of my comfort zone, and enjoying each moment as it steps in front of me. There will always be struggles we face in life and as much as we wish for everything to go as planned, it just will not. Once we accept that life has so much to offer and we start to realize the changes are new opportunities in life, you allow you faith to take over and help you handle what God gives you. The good, the bad, the expected as well as the unexpected.
Go ahead and write your chapter one, and when tomorrow comes and your chapter one doesn't fit into your plan, change it. Write a new chapter one. After all your chapters are written in life, your chapter one will be easier to write.
