How are you? How are you doing? What’s up?
How do you respond when people check up on you? Do you respond differently to different people? Do you give different answers, some more transparent than others, depending on whom you can trust?
Well, I trust you. Yes, I do. For one reason, you are actually reading this when so many others couldn’t care less. You care enough to get past the introduction.
So, how am I doing? Not well.
I think it was my wife (I can’t remember) who asked me the other day, “Are you having a mid-life crisis?” “Maybe I am,” I replied. I haven’t researched it, so I don’t know. However, I would bet that a definition would include a picture of someone that looks eerily like me.
For one thing, five decades worth of mistakes, miscalculations, stupid decisions, and squandered opportunities continually plague my memories. It’s not that I sit around and meditate on my past until I think of something depressing; they are triggered by ordinary things like a store at the mall, a movie, a song, a smell, an event, an expression, etc. I can drive down one road and be hit with 10 regrets in the span of a mile.
Secondly, there’s all the things I could have done and should have done. Have I accomplished anything? Of course. But when I am in a group of others who’ve accomplished anything similar, I feel like a fake, an imposter. I should be able to fit in, but now I never feel worthy.
I’m not a spiritual giant or anything. I’m not that great of a speaker. I have a very hard time praying. And, based on my cumulative experience, I’m a lousy pastor. Yet, that is all I’ve ever really wanted to be. I wanted to be “man of the Book,” a man with worn knees, a figure behind the pulpit my children would tell their children about.
But here I am, pushing 56 years old, a new employee in an automotive factory, with no savings, no home, a literal antique car to drive, and no real desire to pastor another church.
Simply put, I don’t know who I am anymore. For that matter, I’m not sure I ever did.
I don’t know where life is going to find me 5 or 10 years from now. However, even though I may never be a leader of anything, I can strive to be a good follower of Jesus.
The Recovering Legalist 
You have changed your venue for pointing others to Christ. My workplace has abruptly changed a few times, too. I often feel like an imposter, too. Then, I ask myself if I’m doing what the Lord wants me to do right now, if the answer is “yes,” that has to be good enough. God can use our failures for something good.
Praying for you!
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Anthony, somewhere along the line we come to the realization that who we are, as compared with who we think we could have been or perhaps should have been, are not necessarily one and the same thing. We all make bad decisions for various reasons. I’m 78, I’ve been through what you are going through. Believe it or not, pushing 56 is still young. Reality does have a way of catching up with all of us and the truth of the matter is that we are not Jesus, BUT, His Holy Spirit resides within us and what He can and will do in us throughout our remaining years (God granting us this grace), depends solely on His capabilities, not ours. I am of the opinion that nothing that we go through is without purpose, the problem being, sometimes it takes a while for us to see the benefits that we have reaped along the way. You’re looking at the negatives but you haven’t experienced or realized the positives yet. Nobody expects you to be more than you are but you evidently do. Your name is written in heaven, you have experienced love and given love. Not everyone gets that. There is more light ahead and comfort in resting in our faith in Jesus. And it’s not over yet, not by a long shot. We have but one work to actually do and that is believe in Jesus, who the Father has sent (John 6:29). Everything else, literally, is God working in us and through us, and sometimes in spite of us, to bring us to this reality realization. You may not have done or accomplished all that you envisioned but you have done what many of us have not done, and you have learned things that only can be learned, by going through what you went through. The grace of God’s love in you has yet to be seen as it will eventually be seen. Love in Christ – Bruce
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Ditto what Bruce wrote, although I am only 76 and retired. My blogging has allowed me to continue to reach others with the Word of God, and I miss your insights into His Word.
You and your family continue to be in my prayers.
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