What if...

Gene Simmons, famous rocker best-known for moral turpitude of every stripe, said something pretty interesting lately on his horrific little reality show. "What if," he said (and I am strictly paraphrasing here) everything I did in all those years that I was building myself up was wrong?" He was supposedly desperate to mend fences with his common-law wife, who had briefly dragged her designer suitcases over to a hotel. Many of you may be asking yourselves why I would have been watching such a television program. The answer is that I do not know. It stands for everything I oppose. Gene's remark, however, did give me pause as I channel-surfed that afternoon. "What if," I asked myself, "all of my escape-oriented behaviors have added up to one big wrong life? What if all of the things I thought I could get away with not doing I will now pay for for the rest of my life? What if I made a wrong turn at some point in my life's history and now nothing will ever really fit right for the rest of my days on this earth?" These are questions I have wrestled with a lot lately. They are classic mid-life queries for which I have no real answer. I do know that in every case in which I ran for cover into my escape activities (and they were all legal and "moral") it was because I was overwhelmed by a depression and anxiety as powerful as the undertow of a storm-tossed sea. I just have never let God free me from those two ultra-ugly destroyers. I know He wants to. I know He loves me. Maybe what I should focus on for whatever time I have left on this broken sod is just letting Him be my strength. Maybe I wouldn't stumble and fall so heartbreakingly hard if I weren't looking back while running from my fears. I am a lonely person. I have a lonliness that opens like a cavern in the desert, miles deep with nothing but sand tumbling in. The only antidote for that is Jesus. I know that. He's the only one who comes in when all of the users go on out. If it were not for my husband and children, the three people I love most on the earth, I would be lost. As much joy as they bring me, I still wonder if I would have been a much better wife and mother had I made myriad different choices in my relationships with them. Been a better example for the kids. Contributed more to the world through my talents, time and energy. Been a better friend who didn't reject before she was rejected. Brought more to my marriage through income rather than food no one wants to eat. You get the picture. I don't get a do-over. I guess I'll have to settle for a do-better. From this point on, of course.