If I Were Forty Again…u

If I Were Forty Again by AChuckAllen

You know what? We get older every single day. That’s the end of this lesson. But! Every single day, you should get wiser. I have definitely gotten wiser over the past twenty years and here are four lessons that I would love to pass on to my forty year-old self. They might even help you.

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Life really is hard, but it can be so much fun when you stop caring about what everybody else thinks about you and your alleged state of income. Take time to be very grateful for the billions of things that you could enjoy. Don’t spend another second chasing something for the nanosecond of pleasure keeping up with your neighbor and their “stuff.” You will always have folks that are smarter, wealthier, better looking, or seem happier than you are. Celebrate them and celebrate you! Life is so much fun when you live in the contentment of what you have! Before the Apostle Paul uttered the words, “I can do all things through Christ who strengthens me,” he said that he “had learned to be content with having much or having little.” I cannot even count the times that I have missed a full and rewarding moment by burning foolish energy on foolish thoughts regarding what someone else thought of me. If you live by people’s acceptance, you’ll die by their rejection.

Life is so much fun when you don’t make a big deal about everything that doesn’t go your way. I wasted a lot of happiness getting frustrated or angry over the smallest things. I have learned that there are very few things that are worth getting bent out of shape about. If you take the news too seriously, you’ll forget that it is their job to get you all twitter-pated (my dad’s term). I’d love to have a five dollar bill for every time that I got exasperated over someone that did something ridiculous while driving. I’ll never forget driving from Snellville, GA to Lilburn, GA in 1976. An older dude in a Subaru pulled a little further into the road than he might should have and I hit the horn and added my middle finger for emphasis. Not cool! That guy sat at the same table I did, twelve years later as I was newly entering the ministry and he was the chairman of the personnel team – OUCH! Calm down. You will really benefit from this. James was right, “Everyone should be quick to listen, slow to speak and slow to become angry.”

Life is full of hope and full of possibility. I spent far too many days fighting on the edge of depression and too many times surrendering to it. I realize that many folks struggle with mental illness, but my challenge wasn’t about mental illness, it was fighting the endless expectations that I placed on myself. One might think that it is a good thing to set high expectations and goals for your life, and they would be correct. Where they might be incorrect is that life punches you in the gut sometimes, and you need that, sometimes. Every time that I couldn’t achieve some other level of expectation, I would crash and burn. Not from some external factor, but from the internal war between my ears. Who knew, that all along life’s journeys, I could actually choose to be at peace with the Divine and be at peace with my own self? Jeremiah reaffirms this as he penned these words, “God has plans to prosper you and not to harm you, plans to give you a hope and a future.”

Life might change your plans, but roll with it. A friend of mine is fond of saying, “blessed are the flexible, for they shall not be bent out of shape.” I have always welcomed change, but not so well when “change has been done to me.” I’ve learned this lesson well. Every thing, big or small, that happens in your life is there to sharpen and better you for your future. Stop learning that and your life will come off the rails. Learn that early and you’ll begin to enjoy a far better life! Let’s face it…”for everything there is a season.”

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As I say at the end of every sermon, Go In Peace!

–AChuck