Jim Willis

QUOTE OF THE WEEK

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"We grow in stages. In Western culture we’ve named some of them childhood, adolescence, young adulthood, middle age, and the “golden years.”

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Once you go through a few of these, if you’re an introspective sort at all, you discover that the end of one stage and the beginning of another is marked by an unsettling time that may last for a few years. A boy isn’t quite ready to give up his childhood toys, for instance. He doesn’t want to play with them, necessarily. But he’s not quite ready to throw them away, either. A college student usually needs to go back to visit the old high school at least once during the first year after graduation. An elder wants to visit old haunts or do some youthful activity “one more time.”

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This is perfectly normal. In order to enter a new stage of life, the old stage must be put away. We “die” to ourselves - at least the “self” we used to be. And death is rarely painless.

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-Jim Willis

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From Faith, Trust, & Belief: A Trilogy of the Spirit

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JW2 Publications

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