With another birthday comes more awareness: Make every day, and every decision, count | Opinion

I celebrated my 84th birthday on Feb. 12. Hallelujah!

When people ask me how it feels to be 84, I usually tell them, “Great”. And it really is great. There are so many reasons I can tell you why it is so great to me to be this age. But there is not enough time or paper to tell you, item by item.

I don’t believe that any of us, when we are young, ever thought about growing old; what we would look like, or how we would feel. None of us could see that far into the future. I am glad that we couldn’t. Still, often when I am doing my morning prayer and meditation, I can’t help but think of how far the Lord has brought me, I think about the perils and the what-ifs that could have happened to me but didn’t. I shudder when I think of the life hurdles the Lord brought me over. I know, with assurance, that it was the grace of God that has brought me this far. That is why when somebody asks me how I am doing, I usually respond with, “I’m a blessed woman.” That’s because I am.

Like many others, when I was young, time seemed to move slowly. I thought I had a lot of time to live. Then one day I woke up and here I am, in the evening of my life.

Where did the time go? Did I always use the time given me wisely? I don’t think so. I procrastinated. Because after all, there would always be tomorrow. I have learned that tomorrow isn’t promised to any of us. That we must not take for granted the minutes, hours, or days allotted us. We must make every day count for something. Because time really does matter.

The more than four score years I have lived have been nothing short of a blessing. Looking back over the years of my life, I realize that nothing that has happened to me was by pure accident or incident. It has all been a part of God’s plan for my life.

I must admit, though, there have been times when I could feel the Lord nudging me to go a certain way, and I stubbornly decided to be disobedient to His divine leadership and take another path. When that happened, I had to suffer the consequences for my choices. The result wasn’t always pretty.

Consequences. That is as serious word.

Advice to son unheeded

As a young single mother raising sons, I shared this bit of advice with them: there will always be consequences for your actions. My sons, young male chauvinists that they were (especially Rick, my older son), often seemed to think that I didn’t know what I was talking about, when I told them there would be consequences for their actions, good or bad. That advice didn’t really click with Rick, until he thought he could break his high school basketball coach’s rules and still make the first string the team.

Rick was in the 10th grade, and I learned he had started smoking. That bothered me because he was a budding basketball star at his school. “If you are going to make the team, you shouldn’t be smoking and you should be home by 10 p.m. so you can get a good night’s rest,” I said to him one evening. That didn’t set too well with Rick. After dinner and homework, he wanted to hang out at a nearby convenient store with his buddies.

When he came home after his curfew, I warned him that his coach could have spies; that he would know if Rick was bending or breaking his rules. I told him the story about the legendary Coach Brown at the old Dorsey High School in Liberty City, how he would wait outside the old Liberty Theater (we called it The Shack) to see which of his guys would be out after his curfew. I told Rick how the manager of the theater would unlock the back door of the theater — the emergency exit — to let the football players out. And I told him how the guys ran through the projects, to where they lived because they didn’t want to get in trouble with Coach Brown. They wanted to play football, not sit on the bench.

My son laughed in my face at the story. He didn’t believe me, and it really was a true story. Long story short, Rick kept on smoking and hanging out at the store with his boys until after his curfew.

Then came the day the coach picked his team. As good as Rick was, he wasn’t picked for the starting team. That day, he barely made it home from school before bursting in tears at his disappointment.

It was all I could do to not say, “I told you so.” It was a grim lesson. But a necessary one. Later, we talked about the consequences of his actions. I explained to him that the coach wanted a winning team and there were rules and sacrificing to be followed and made in building a winning team.

I don’t know if Rick remembered that lesson later in his short life (he died of a heart attack at age 55 in 2013). I would like to think that he did.

Thankful for the journey

In my life, there have been many times when I have had to pay the consequences for a wrong decision; when I stopped when I should have moved on. When I accepted bad advice, when in my heart, I knew I shouldn’t have listened. I realize there is nothing I can do now, about what might have been. What I can do is to use for good whatever time I have left on this earth.

At 84, I am so thankful for this journey that I have been on for these many years. And while I know there is still a lot of work to be done, I am thankful for the changes I have witnessed — in my country and in my community. I am thankful for the little things — like being able to watch my hair turn white. Most of all, I am thankful that even an old-timer like me has been afforded another opportunity to live out my Christian faith and values.

I am thankful for you, my friends, for traveling along with me on this amazing journey called life. And I am so excited as I face the start of a new year.

Bea Hines can be reached at bea.hines@gmail.com