Ghosts From the Past…

"And though we are not now that strength which in old days
Moved earth and heaven, that which we are, we are—
Made weak by time and fate, but strong in will;
To strive, to seek, to find, and not to yield..." - Alfred Lord Tennyson

Do you pay attention to time passing you by? Every once in a while I will intentionally remember the past, what I have been through and who I have spent my years with. I recall seasons of life that were much different than today, its almost like it’s a different show but with me as the main character.

If I think back I can remember the age of 16 in high school as a senior. I can remember the internet being born, baggy pants, playing football, the spot with my friends, red bandanas, gangs, lowrider magazine, pagers, cruising, and a whooole lot of drugs. But even more so I remember my friends at the time. Young jovial faces gleaming with potential and the false pretense that they were invincible. I remember believing that I would ride next to those faces forever and that we would somehow avoid time and stay young and dumb forever.

I can remember the age of 18 as a freshman in college. I can remember 8am classes, hangovers, pepsi’s and sandwiches, drinking keystone lights, drugs, stinky dorm rooms, late night parties, bad eating, attempts at staying in shape, shoulder tapping, black N Milds, NFL Blitz, stealing backpacks to sell back books and ten page papers. But I also remember helping my friends move out of their dorm rooms, hungover from the night before when we partied like rockstars, drunk as hell with the knowledge that that night was the last night some of us would ever see each other.

I remember the age of 20, having come to Christ and still in college. I can remember afternoon classes, knowledge of campus, teachers, classes and the town. I remember bus routes, computer labs, my apartment with my cousin, my very first cell phone, internet chat rooms, discovering rock music, moot court, internship, helping out with the youth group, and aca taco burritos. I can remember staring at faces that faded into another life, never to be seen again.

I remember the age of 22, being a youth pastor, working at Fed Ex and Sears. I can remember being busy all the time, I remember Chico, CA, My apartment on the northside of town, summers at the bear hole, little ceasars pizza’s and the Legend, getting my Durango, and trips to Monterey. I remember dust in the wind, learning that people could look you in the face and lie to you and forever and friendship were an oxymoron. And yet I remember the sweetest face that I would ever meet and realizing that God could use a person to show you how much he loved you.

I can continue doing this for days, remembering the years just as quickly as they fade but I’d rather not. As the seasons of life have passed me by I realize that I have been so many different versions of myself. I have grown up little by little, quicker in some seasons than others. It’s crazy to think how seasons in our life change and at times we don’t even notice it. Faces come to mind that I thought would be with me forever and at this moment are foreign. Moments and words that I thought were burned into my heart have healed and been replaced with fresh wounds but also with positive memories. Views that were once commonplace now the backdrop to moments that are frozen in time and captured by my mind.

Welcome to life, is it what you thought it would be?