I Want My Life Back

I want My Life Back

Today I heard a miner talking on TV. He had been trapped deep in the earth for several weeks. He was explaining that he was having a hard time readjusting his life. He said “I want my life back”. He said that after days of wondering if he would ever again see the light-of day he found changes in his body and those changes have caused him to want his life back.
I felt sorry for that miner but I have heard that same statement from dozens of people I have talked with. None of them had ever spent a minute underground. It seems many feel that their lives have been lost, some feel it was taken away by others, but many by their own choice, it makes me feel that many willingly gave them away before they realized what a treasure they held.
I just heard a TV announcer make this statement while we were viewing a miner being pulled up that long shaft in Chile; “He is half way to freedom”. What do you think that announcer’s interpretation of freedom was? What was the miner’s idea of his freedom? What is YOUR definition of freedom?
As for the miner was his idea; a look at the sky above his head, a taste of clear cool water, a T-bone steak, the feel of his wife’s warm body next to his, or just another chance to “go out” and mess up his life again? As you can see we each have many different ideas of what we consider to be freedom.
There is a direct relationship between each person’s interpretations of freedom and how they live their lives or on “getting their lives back”.
For the next few minutes let’s dig a little deeper to realize how different people could view both statements.
For our first example I’ll use a seventeen year old girl with strict parents. Tomorrow our girl will have her eighteenth birthday. Tomorrow she will have her “freedom”. She no longer has to be home at certain time. She will have her life back; she can live it HER way.
Next, we have a person serving the last day of a ten year prison sentence for drugs (both selling and using). Tomorrow he will have his freedom, no more clanking cell doors or waiting to eat that rotten prison food. As soon as he gets his life back will we find him back on the street selling and using?
Then we have our miner who was trapped underground for over two months. We now find him above ground, he now has his freedom, but maybe more important he has his tomorrows. He will find it difficult to get his life back, if that means going back into the mine.
It hasn’t taken long, for our now eighteen year old, to realize that the “real world” wasn’t that bed of roses of her dreams. Maybe the life partly controlled by her loving and caring parents wasn’t that bad after all. Maybe, if she would ask, she could still have some of that life back.
For the man from prison, he has already found that getting that kind of life back is just more of the same old, same old. He had forgotten, while in the safety of prison he had three square meals and was relatively sure he would to see the sun the next day.
For the miner, being able to look up and see the sky was a rebirth. As one man said “I met both God and the Devil down there and God won”. He was given a second chance to live his life and to leave his unwanted past down in that hole.
The person that says they want their life back must realize that when they woke this morning God was giving them their life back!
Take a little time to think about how many “near misses” each of us has had in our lives. As we open our eyes each morning that is God’s way of saying here is another day for you. Not only does God give us that day he also puts many blessings at our feet to make that day more enjoyable. Be careful though God also gives each of us one more thing. He gives us our “free agency” (the right to mess up our lives). I feel many pastors touch to lightly on this subject.
When God saw how badly so many of us were doing on our own he send us Jesus to show us a way to be forgiven for the bad stuff we do to others and ourselves.
Do I want my life back? I’m sorry but I can’t remember losing it! Would I like to “go back”? I’m sure this body could not stand the abuses again that I gave it when I was sixteen! The answer is no.
What are my hopes for my life? I hope I wake in the morning as a normal person (whatever that is), take a deep breath, feel the floor under my feet, from there on my day and my life are up to God and me. How about tomorrow? That’s the same as today! If I wake I plan to take as big a bite out of it as my body will allow!