Sadly, in the process of living we come to believe that who we are today is who we have always been. The river of time carries us so far downstream that it is hard to remember the headwaters of our lives. Those high mountain streams of virgin thought, experience, and purity.

It is not time’s fault that we change. We simply evolve into the sum of our choices. I recently heard it said that if you want to know who you will be in five years, simply consider what you read, what/who you listen to, and how you spend your time.

The Ohio River I grew up on is nothing like the trout streams of Randolph County that make its headwaters. Nor does it resemble the free flowing stream it was at the time it was canoed by the Shawnee. Today it is dark, polluted, occupied, and prone to destruction. It has become so full, so used, so changed, that it no longer resembles the river of its youth.

And so it is with our own lives. All the years of our youth build to that pinch point where we make the biggest decisions of our lives at the point in time that we are the least suited to make such decisions. Like the confluence of many small streams, a big river is born, and everything that came before is forgotten.

As my own life approaches that marker to remind me that fifty years have passed, I thus far have avoided sentiments of dispare that seem to hit many folks. Instead I am working to clear a few decades of clutter from my mind. Being deliberate to set aside those things which have long distracted me from who I really am, and who God designed me to be.

There is the work on earth God designed us to be about, and then there is the work and obligations we choose to go about, and they rarely come anywhere close to the former plan.

A while back I found myself trying to remember who I was way back then, before the world got hold of me. What happened to that boy full of heart, full of yearning and wander; unblemished.

Little by little I’ve been rediscovering him. The more time I set aside in silence with God, the more of the world I choose to turn off, the more of myself I turn away from….I start to hear the water over the rocks again, and to clearly see the bedrock of the headwaters.

Through four years of college I had a picture of Montana cut from a magazine hanging on my wall, ever to remind me of a place I longed to go. Floating down the Upper Fork of the Flathead River in September, I was happy to just sit there and take it in. To reflect. To appreciate all that the Great River has brought through these years, and that God had chosen the time for that place in my mind to actually surround me.

To me, the saddest thing in life is neglecting to live it. Life is a gift from God – every day of it. Every day we owe it to God to thank Him. Every day we owe it to others to help them through it. Every day we owe it to ourselves to be still long enough to remember who we are.