These times of our lives

I was talking with a friend lately about his struggles of life's most difficult times. Those times that bring home the reality of unpleasant things we must all face. Our parents age along with other close family members and our children cross over thresholds in their journey of life. We feel uncertain about the outcome of one and saddened about the certainty of the other.

He mentioned the depression he feels dealing with his aging parents and trying to direct them in their affairs. It's that time of our lives that we become the parent and recognize that things are never going to be the same. It falls upon one of us to carry the burden while others will avoid dealing with these realities.

It reminded my to well about doing these things with my Dad in his death bed. A time in which we should not have had to deal with these very tough decisions. But like most of us we procrastinated because he nor I wanted to deal with reality.

I have recently gotten very serious about my own future and we have been trying to make long term decisions about retirements, life insurance and those things that I don't want anyone to be burdened with at the end. We spent allot of time speculating about how things would turn out fifteen or so years in the future. My conclusion was that no matter what we planned it is a crap shoot. Discussion and decision that I never imagined I would be dealing with now.

Our children grow into lives of their own and sometimes experience disappointments and setbacks. Some times their issues seem to become so overwhelming and we feel so helpless to save them. Unfortunately, for my heart most of my children's problems have occurred at times I have been unable to provide much relief. Like any parent my heart breaks because of it.

We loose dear friends because of life situations and feel emptiness in our hearts and yearn for things to be, as my friend said, "back in those carefree days". The truth is things will never be like they used to be. Life does not allow "do overs". We are forever bound tomorrow by decisions we make today. Before you decide the grass in greener on the other side of the fence make sure the soil is not full of worms. I have heard it said that it's better to know the devil you've got than the one in the deep blue sea. Or something like that.

These are the times of our lives and so many things are happening that will influence the time we have left. It's scary, I think, to imagin what the future holds for us and our children. We can't control the outcomes and it's not always easy to handle the results.

Yep these times of our lives are difficult but they are the times of our lives.