"I Would Have If"

The other day I was sitting in the rocking chair mall at Charlotte Douglas International Airport, waiting for my next flight, when I saw something I had never seen before. A young mother was pulling her roller board luggage behind her and attached to it was her baby carrier. Stuffed inside the small compartment was a healthy baby boy. I say boy because he was surrounded by light blue blankets and had a blue beanie covering his perfectly round head. As they passed me, I was able to see his expression. Although he looked very comfortable, he looked confused, staring out the back of an object moving forward, was throwing him off, and he looked like he wanted to be a part of what he was missing. In a very few seconds, the backwards traveling baby was out of view and on his way to his next flight. I laughed for a moment, and then it hit me as I rocked back slowly in the chair and sipped my Starbucks Blonde.

You and I are not built to go through life backwards! We can be very comfortable, with all the pacifiers of life, blankets, food, cars, I Pad’s, Starbucks, but going backwards is not the way God intended for us to see the world.

By going forward and being able to see the world as it comes at us makes us able to be participatory. We can have a voice in the direction we head. We can interact with folks. We can avoid problems as we see them coming towards us. We can be excited about what we see coming up ahead. Simply, going forward helps us enjoy what God has lined up for us to be participators in. The opposite is true of my friends experience in the stroller.

When we cannot see what is coming and can only see life as it passes us by, we cannot interact at any deep level…there is no time. Passing us by are things that look interesting for just a moment and then they are gone. And we see a lot of people’s backsides, as they head where they are going. In backwards world I cannot participate…I can only react to what passed me by and to what might have been an opportunity. Things that could catch our interest and teach us something about the world we live in pass us by at racetrack speed and we cannot grab it quick enough. But here is the clincher…some people are happy with that.

As strange as it may sound, some people are actually happier that way, going through life backwards, letting someone else do the pulling here and there, taking them through life. They are carried through obstacles that are teaching moments and sit back as life passes them by. They cannot be blamed for any decisions that were made…especially bad ones. The backwards travelers can truly say, “Don’t blame me, I was just along for the ride.

I don’t want to do it that way. I want to have a chance to see things as they are coming toward me so that I can decide whether I want to interact with them or avoid them. And even if I didn’t see something coming, I still want to be moving forward so that I do not miss any of the God-incidences that happen every day in our lives. I want to be a participant in life and not an observer. I want to be proactive instead of reactive. I want to be able to say, “I did it because.” Instead of “I would have if.”

Let’s keep moving forward….please!

In Bogota, Colombia,
Wick
3/19/12