Why Me?

It's amazing how much my life has changed over the years. It wasn't that long ago I was lonely, single, and well to some extent free. Not free as to say I could do whatever I want. But as a young single adult, I was free to take a chance knowing that if it didn't work out only I had to face the consequences of my actions. Free to know that if I didn't feel like going to work on a particular morning that I might feel a financial strain, or even lose my job but that ultimately once again only I would suffer. Now strangely enough I find myself in a "whole new world" to quote Aladdin. I find myself responsible for more than myself, now my actions directly affect those whom I love the most in this world, my wife Sarah and my son Judah. If I fail to bring home enough money to pay the bills, then they are the ones who go hungry, if I can't pay the rent they are the ones in the cold. My actions however great or small now have consequences far greater than I can often foresee.

Don't get me wrong I do not consider my wife and son to be a bad thing, quite the opposite, I often wonder what I ever did to deserve such a great blessing. I know of no one more amazing, more beautiful, more precious to me than my wife. And I know of no one cuter, and in whom I have greater hopes and dreams than little Judah. I love them both with a love that knows no boundary, nor could ever be defined with such a simple thing as words. It is an indescribable love, ever changing, ever growing, ever finding new ways of touching my heart.

As I sit here I am reminded of a passage in the Lord Of The Rings, in which Frodo is speaking to Gandalf.
'This ring!' he stammered. 'How on earth did it come to me?'

I find myself wondering the same thing. How on earth did this all happen? I was single, now I'm married, with a five week old copy of myself sitting quietly in his swing. How did I suddenly go from being responsible for one to being responsible for three? This ring how on earth did it come to me? How on earth indeed? My life I find is full of little wonders, about which I can't help but wonder. Like Frodo I feel myself to be ill suited for such a perilous quest as God seems to continue to thrust upon me. I was not prepared to be a husband or a father, I was not prepared to build a youthgroup from nothing, I was not prepared for such a perilous quest, yet I find myself here all the same, a hobbit in a world of Giants.

I find Gandalfs answer to Frodo's questions applies equally well to my own question. 'Such questions cannot be answered...You may be sure that it was not for any merit that others do not possess: not for power or wisdom at any rate. But you have been chosen, and you must therefore use such strength and heart and wits as you have.' So it is with these words of wisdom passed down by a wise old man that I press forward. For if a hobbit can carry upon him the fate of an entire world, perhaps I can carry out the will of one much wiser and stronger than I.

"But I have so little of these things!"

- Frodo Baggins