My First Half Century

I have a birthday this week. It’s a different birthday in that it that involves a number that ends in zero. The first number is a five. I don’t suppose that turning fifty will be any different from turning forty. There really isn’t any point in dwelling on it because birthdays in general are one of those things that happen whether we dwell on it or not.

I can’t say that I feel any older than I did when I turned forty. What I know is that to me fifty doesn’t seem as old to me know as it did when my Dad turned fifty. I remember thinking when my Dad turned that life as fifty year old involved spending a lot of rip roaring Saturday nights at home watching Hee Haw and The Lawrence Welk Show.

I’ve learned that the reason my Dad enjoyed watching Hee Haw and The Lawrence Welk Show on Saturday night wasn’t because he was fifty, it was because he enjoyed Hee Haw and The Lawrence Welk Show. So it is that my interests will not change either.

In fact, I don’t think this birthday will change a lot of things for me. There are a couple of medical tests my doctor says I need, one of which involves putting a scope in a place I am fairly certain the Good Lord never intended for a scope to be put when he made us. I think I’ll survive that.

Turning fifty means one has lived a half a century. While it doesn’t mean that my life is fleeting it does probably mean that the band has left the field at halftime and we are at least watching the third quarter. It also is a time to reflect on what has passed and what the future holds.

I’ve never been one to set a lot of goals. My life has been a lot like the feather in the movie “Forrest Gump.” The feather went through life and had some grand adventures. I’ve always just flowed through and taken whatever challenges and opportunities came my way.

I’m fairly well satisfied and can’t think of anything in life that I would drastically change. Sure I would have told my mom and dad I loved them more often I would probably have worked a little harder in some of my classes at the University of Georgia and tried to eat a little better.

Thirty years ago I never imagined that I would be the pastor of a Methodist Church in a county seat town in Middle Georgia but that is where I find myself today and I am fine with that.

I did set one goal a little over twenty five years ago to marry the prettiest girl I’d ever seen and I can check that off as something that I’ve accomplished. She and I have raised a beautiful daughter who now is beginning to flap her wings and fly on her own.

What I do know is that wherever I’ve been in that past and wherever I go in the future I do not travel alone. God is with me. He’s been with me for fifty years. He will be with me through eternity and for that I am grateful.