This past weekend I walked into my mother-in-law’s house wearing a long overcoat and scarf. My brother-in-law said to me, “I like that coat, but you look middle-aged with that on.”
I laughed and responded, “I am middle aged.”
Both of my grandmothers lived into their nineties, one grandfather lived into his late 80s and both of my parents are alive and well. Given that history, I am what the life insurance industry calls an “excellent risk.”
I may not yet be on the tenth hole of life but chances are I’m at least somewhere on the ninth hole. With my pathetic golf skills I’d be in the rough or in the bunker or be getting ready to four-putt my way to the turn.
One of the benefits of getting older is becoming more aware of what you don’t know rather than being impressed with what you do know.
It can be easy in this country to take the good we have been given for granted. Generally we have been among the most fortunate people ever to live on this planet. We have abundant resources and food. We have a functioning legal system and are protected by the rule of law.
With a game over Thanksgiving weekend, I had little chance to really take the time to think about how blessed my life has been. But sometimes there are moments in life, days not labeled as a Thanksgiving holiday, when we are moved to give thanks or re-evaluate our faith.
In the early part of this century’s first decade I had fallen into that slippage of faith and appreciation that can creep in when you are living a hectic life free from true hardships like war, sickness or hunger.
Then a trip to Mexico City in the summer of 2005 changed all that for me. We were invited down to coach football at the National University. The Pumas, a team with over a century of playing American football, brought us down to help coach its team.
On our last day in that wonderful city we went to visit the Shrine to Our Lady of Guadalupe—the holiest Catholic site in the country.
At the shrine two churches stood amid a large crowded stone plaza. Near the plaza were many poor people, some asking for money. There were also devout pilgrims making a painful walk on their knees across the hard stone plaza to enter the church—probably over a quarter of a mile.
Once inside the church I was struck by the fervent faith of so many others. Most had a lot less to be thankful to God for than I did, but there they were.
Then one of those moments in life hit me. On our way out of the plaza I saw a poor elderly woman in a white hood begging for money. For some reason, known perhaps only to God, she made eye contact with me. I began to walk on, then momentarily froze.
Thinking of so many things I learned from my parents, in Catholic School and in masses through the years, I turned around. Lessons of charity, lessons of God’s presence in each human being and the belief in the dignity of all stopped me in my tracks.
I pulled out a wad of pesos—perhaps totaling about $20 to $30 — and handed it to her. Her hands were rough, her face wrinkled and worn by a hard life of poverty.
She smiled and said softly, “Vaya Con Dios.”
That night at dinner I asked our host Eduardo what that meant. He told me, “Go with God.”
There she was in that moment, perched on the steps outside the plaza putting her faith in God. Where was my faith? Why did I need to be reminded to walk with God?
I learned a lesson from the book “A Small Corner of Hell-Dispatches from Chechnya” by Anna Politkovskaya, a Russian journalist who covered the brutal war in Chechnya. She paid for her bravery with her life when she was murdered in October of 2006.
In the book I read devastating tales of young men being taken from their homes at night, their parents powerless to stop it. Days later they’d receive a ransom demand for their son’s dead body and pay it just so they could have something to bury.
Through this brutal existence of war, threats and intimidation, many still kept their faith.
These lessons shook me to be thankful for even the smallest of life’s gifts.
I am still so far from perfect faith, but I have come to appreciate the good and bad in my life. I know whatever path is put before me, whether smooth or rocky, that if I “Go with God,” the faith will sustain me. It was a lesson learned at a time and place I’d never expected to be from someone I’d never expected to meet—but it was a lesson learned just the same.
