The following is a post from my website Chrissy…In Her Sixties, which I am currently working on shutting down. The website you are now looking at, That Hobbit Lady, has been with me since November 2004 (nearly 20 years) and contains over 500 posts. In Her Sixties only goes back to 2017, with less than 40 posts. So, you see…in the interest of consolidating, I could either send 500+ posts from That Hobbit Lady to In Her Sixties, or 30+ posts from In Her Sixties to That Hobbit Lady. In addition to the math of that first option not making much sense, it also happens that the term “In Her Sixties” will only to apply to me for a few more years. But I will be a Hobbit Lady forever. So: no-brainer.
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October 15, 2017
Life sucks. Right? Stuff happens, and it’s not always good stuff. We all get bumped, bruised and jaded along the way. It’s part of getting older. It’s part of being alive. I’m no exception. Sometimes I look at who I am now, and it makes me sad that I’ve lost so much of the innocence and optimism I had when I was younger. Six decades is a long time, and during that time, I have to admit, I’ve changed. And not always for the better.
But even though I know I’ve lost so much along the way, at the same time I’m keenly aware that deep down, at my core, that optimistic teenager I once was has not been completely eradicated from my personality. She may not be as vital, healthy and strong as she once was, but at certain quiet moments, my gut tells me she’s still in there somewhere. Buried deep down. Not dead. Just sleeping.
There are actually two very distinct ways I know my Inner Teen hasn’t been completely suffocated, two aspects of my life that still allow me to occasionally glimpse and access that unscathed person I once was. But these two areas of my life are so completely different from each other, that I don’t feel it’s appropriate to deal with them both in one post. So I’ll talk about the first, and most important aspect first, and save dessert for another day.
So, you’ll notice on the right side of this blog, there’s an icon for “Spirit,” and I’ll make no bones about it: I’m a born-again Christian. I was raised Catholic, went to Mass every Sunday, but somehow always felt I wasn’t completely connected to God. I always wanted to be closer to God, but wasn’t really sure how to do that. Then, when I was 16 or 17, I had a spiritual awakening. God started “throwing Christians in my path,” and through a number of influences, I came to understand what was really meant by “Jesus is the Son of God,” and how that impacted me personally. I was looking for a path, for a personal relationship with God, and I found it. I had been floundering around, looking for the path that would get me going in the direction I wanted to go, and then, suddenly, I was on the Path.
Of course, since that time, I’ve always been a Christian, but I haven’t always been “on the Path.” Like anything else in life, there tend to be times when you do better, and times when you do not as well as you ought. But one thing I’ve always felt certain of, over all these many decades, is that God has not given up on me, He is always, always calling me back to Him. I can’t tell you how many times I’ve been convinced of this.
These last several years, I’ve felt more connected to God than I had in the several preceding years. To some degree, I put this down to getting older and therefore more inclined to take a look at The Big Picture. And when you look at The Big Picture, the main feature in the picture is God, and the knowledge that though most of my earthly life is now behind me, Eternity looms ahead, and getting closer all the time. So, why not give more attention to where I’m going?
When I’m in communion with God, in prayer or Bible reading, that’s when I feel the troubles of the world fade away and fall off , that’s when I feel most connected to what is most REAL. Incidentally, I probably should have mentioned “worship” as another experience that connects me to God and what is most real, and years ago it did, but truth is, it’s been many years now since I’ve gone to church. Reference the “bumped, bruised, jaded and scathed” comments above, and all I’ll say right now is that’s a whole ’nother topic, for another day. But worship, true worship, is another good way to connect to God, if there aren’t too many other distractions standing in the way.
As a Christian, I know that deep down, when you tear off all these outer layers of stress and noise and commotion, the true nature of the Universe reveals itself as something GOOD, because God is at the center of it all, God is the source of it all, and God is good, and He is in control. I’ll say it again: God is in control!
Sometimes it may not appear that way, especially if you only pay attention to what can be seen on the surface, but if somehow you manage to get past the outer layer, past the superficial, and look intently at The Big Picture, it becomes so clear that there is not only a Design, but also a Designer.
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Obviously, we were not torturing him, not doing this to be mean to him. It was to HELP him. But from his cat-simple vantage point, he couldn’t understand that. I’m reminded of that verse from the Bible, Hebrews 12:11: “All discipline for the moment seems not to be joyful, but sorrowful; yet to those who have been trained by it, afterwards it yields the peaceful fruit of righteousness.” We sometimes have human-simple responses 
to our difficulties, not seeing what God is trying to accomplish in us. We may not UNDERSTAND what’s happening, but that doesn’t negate the fact that God is in control.
I’m reminded also of a metaphor I heard once, long ago, in a sermon, back in the days when I went to church. The preacher described our lives as a tapestry. A beautiful tapestry. But right now, we are on the underside of the tapestry, where the threads and strings are all jumbled together looking like one big mess. When we die and go to Heaven, we’ll be looking down on the tapestry from above, seeing the beautiful design that was being created all along, but which we could never clearly see, until we got the opportunity to look at it from the right vantage point.
One more story, and this is where I really connect all this to my Inner Teen. Because it was indeed when I was a teen, probably 17 in earth years, yet only a year or so in spiritual years, when—and I still have a very intense memory of this—my high school class went on a field trip somewhere-or-other, I don’t remember where, 
but that doesn’t matter; what matters is that I remember sitting on the bus, in the very back, by myself, looking out the window at the world passing by, at the trees and grass, the sky and clouds, but also the buildings and roads, train tracks, whatever, and being overwhelmed by what a huge and beautiful world it was, and how blessed I was to be loved by the Creator and Sustainer of all this. It was just a bus ride, looking out the window at completely ordinary surroundings, and yet it was one of the most spiritual experiences of my life.
Even now, today, decades later, as jaded and cynical as I sometimes feel I’ve become, I still look back on that moment, and recall it vividly, and experience again the Joy felt by that girl who was me…and who still IS me, on some deep level. That’s my Inner Teen. She’s still in there. I can still connect to her sometimes. In fact, I can connect to her at any time, if I just slow down, take a deep breath, and look inside. All is not lost. Yes, the world sucks. But God doesn’t. And He is in control.
