Ever since I retired in March - or rather, ever since Lowe's forced me to retire early - one of the things that I have enjoyed NOT having to do is get up to an alarm clock. I think I've done that maybe twice in the 6 months or so since I retired, and I don't miss it one bit.
I've pretty much settled into a routine, and I'm comfortable with it. I wake up on my own, most of the time when the dogs are ready to get up, which is around 6:30AM or so. The wife is gone to work by then, so I take them downstairs and let them out, and they do their thing out in the back yard while I make my coffee. I let the dogs in and then feed them, texting the wife to make sure she got to work OK while doing so. After I feed the dogs I take my coffee mug out of the coffee maker, put my flavoring in it, fire up the laptop on the dining room table, and catch up on world events while I drink my one cup of coffee for the day.
When I first retired it was almost full light when I got up, but now, 7 months later, it's still full dark when I get up. My chair at the table faces the sliding back door, and I always leave the blinds open so I can watch the sun come up. I can't do this during the summer because as soon as the sun clears the houses behind me it hits me right in the eyes, so I have to close the blinds. But as we all know, the earth's rotational axis changes with the seasons, and at this time of year the sun isn't in my eyes. So I leave the blinds open to watch the new day start.
As I sit there watching the darkness slowly fade and the light gradually take over the land, I can't help but think back to all of the times I've watched that same sun come up while in an entirely different part of the world, thanks to my travels courtesy of the US Air Force.
I remember watching the sun come up over the flightline of Kunsan Air Base, Korea in 1979. I specifically remember parking my truck on the side of the road right in front of the entrance of an old ammunition storage tunnel built by the Japanese in WWII when they occupied the base, and watching "Big Red" (as we called the sun in the Security Police) rise over the flightline, gradually revealing the hangars and the aircraft parked there as the darkness reluctantly gave way to the sunlight. I saw the new day arrive and wondered what it would bring, and wondered what my family was doing and how their day was going so many thousands of miles away.
Ten years later I watched the sun come up over a different flightline, this time at Taegu Air Base, Korea, and as I did so I thought back to the first time I'd watched the same sun come up over the Korean peninsula at Kunsan ten years earlier. I thought of all the changes my life had seen in those ten years, and I wondered what changes I'd see ten years after that. And once again, I wondered what my family was doing and hoped that they would have a good day.
Two years later in 1990 I watched "Big Red" rise over the barren desert of the south end of King Abdul Aziz Air Base in the Kingdom of Saudi Arabia, parked in my combat-laden Hummer in a place that could only be found with a map, a lensatic compass, and an eight digit grid coordinate. I wondered what the day would bring, whether this would be the day when the war started, and should that be the case would I survive it. I kinda always knew I would because I just felt that God had other plans for me that didn't include dying in the deserts of Saudi Arabia, but I always prayed each day with the rising of the Arabian sun that if this was the day war would come, that as few of my comrades would not live to see the sun rise again as possible. And when I watched this sun come up over this strange land, I never felt more alone and as far away from my loved ones. There was a dread, a foreboding that came with watching this sunrise, because we knew that war was coming - we just didn't know when. And when it did come it came in the night, sneaking up on us like a thief.
Five years later I watched the sun come up over the flightline at a remote air base in the Kingdom of Jordan, and I couldn't help but think back to the last time I watched the sun come up over the Middle East, and I marveled at the changes between those two times. And as always, I wondered what this day would bring.
Now each morning I sit at the dining room table with my cup of coffee, laptop in front of me, and I watch the sun come up as it brings us the new day. John Wayne said something about the new day that I think fits here, so I'll share it with you now.
"Tomorrow is the most important thing in life. Comes to us at midnight very clean. It's perfect when it arrives and it puts itself in our hands. It hopes we've learned something from yesterday."
I watch the sun come up, and I hope I've learned something from yesterday. Each day the sun rises and we live to see it is a gift from God, His way of telling us that we have one more day, one more chance, to do something positive and make a positive impact on the world with our actions of the day. Each day that we see the sun rise is a new beginning, a chance for us to right the wrongs of yesterday if need be and to make the new day the best day we possibly can. We should treat each day as if it's a precious gift because that's exactly what it is - a precious gift. None of us knows when our last day will be, so we should treat every day as if it's our last.
The day comes to us clean, unsullied, ready to be used as we see fit. So how will you treat this gift from God, this most precious of gifts?
That's the challenge we all face. How we handle the challenge is the measure of the kind of person we truly are.
I start my day watching the sun come up, watching the arrival of the precious gift He has given me, and I thank Him for another day on this blue ball we call home. I try to make the best of the day that I can, to justify His giving me this precious gift. And when the day is done and the sunlight fades, when darkness falls over the land, I look back on the day and ask myself if I have used the gift God gave me in the best way that I could, and I hope that He will give me another day to do it all again.
What will you do with the gift that God gives you? What will you do with your time here? Remember that an act once done, its effect goes on forever and its consequences, whether for good or for evil, will forever be charged for or against you and you alone. The moving finger writes and having written moves on; nor all your piety nor wit can lure it back to cancel half a line nor all of your tears wash away one word of it.
Each day is a gift from God. Make the best of it.
Deo Vindice
IHC
