Sockland

The old cloud is looming in front of me....it's getting closer...and closer...and pretty soon it's going to backslap me into Grannyville. I shall turn 26 on the 26th. Sure, it sounds innocent enough. Gosh it even sounds young! But that's when it get's you....the old cloud. Raining on your Youth Parade and making you depressed. One day you're smiling and enjoying the drama of your teen years and then Wham! You wake up and your 35, driving a pack of soccer kids in the back of your old-people van while wearing mom pants up to your armpits. Then Wham! You wake up again and you're 75, wearing orthopedic shoes and buying Estee Lauder perfume after you get your hair done in the shape of a football helmet. I'm serious. You snap your fingers and time is shooting ahead at warp speed so fast that even Data from Star Trek couldn't help you figure out what happened. Even the fact that I remember watching original episodes of Star Trek means I'm old! Ah! Maybe I could use the Reading Rainbow guy's special sun visor/eyeglasses thing to let me look back at my youth..it's a thought.

Where do all those years go anyway? That's what I think to myself, and that's what my mom asks me occasionally. My answer: where all the socks are. And all the socks must be in Sockland, because...well I don't know why, but I think it sounds logical. There is a tiny magic portal in all the dryers that somehow slips our socks into an endless land of space, where those poor socks will live forever without a mate. Such a tragedy...for them AND for us, because hey! We want our socks! Maybe all our missing years slip into that wacky land too, so we can be left wigging out because we graduated from high school and then walked right into retirement. I dunno.

I guess it's just not something you can escape really. You get older, hopefully you get wiser...and time goes on. It lasts forever when you're in school though, how is that? In school 3 minutes feel like 3 decades. Such a mysterious phenomenon, time. I still don't get it yet but I hope I can obtain even the slightest sliver of more understanding on it. I just know that my timing is not God's timing. When I feel like I'm ready to move on, many times I have to wait longer. It can get frustrating.

But I'm glad that even though I have no clue where I'll be or for how long, I can at least feel peace knowing that I'm not forgotten. God knows my heart and He knows when I am truly ready to get where He's leading me to be. It can be grueling when you have to be still and wait. I think it's harder than when you're out doing hard work, because you have to fight yourself and train your will to obey the voice of the Lord. Extremely difficult...especially when you inherited stubborn from both sides of your family. But it will be worth it in the end when I finally get to the destination He's placed on my heart because I'll be disciplined and ready to go.

"He satisfies my desires with good things, so that my youth is renewed like the eagle's."

Psalm 103: 5


I'm not going to Sockland though. Definitely not. If everyone's socks go there, then I'm sure it's a wasteland of countless colors and labels that would put Hanes and Fruit of the Loom both to shame, combined! And I honestly can't imagine the smell of the old. I'm sure the socks would be somewhat clean, considering they would have come from the dryer, and that is generally where normal people put them after they've been washed. But the lost years, now hmmm...I'm not sure if that would be noticable....but I know what old smells like. Collard greens and feet. Yuck. No, I do not think that will ever be a destination on my map of places to see. And if I ever happened to stumble through the portal to Sockland, I would just have to say, "Beam me up Scottie, before I hear the sound of The Price Is Right coming on!"

Beware of the old cloud, it'll get ya...