Not long ago, in Eckerd’s Drugs, I overheard a conversation between a father and a small child. I couldn’t see them, because they were at the checkout counter and I was separated from them by a tall display, but their voices were very clear and definite.
— “I told you that you could have one,” said the dad. “You’ll have to put the other back.”
— “You told me I could have one of everything.”
— “You may have one! Now put the other back.”
Sometimes I feel just like that child. I want one of everything, too. I don’t want to have to choose, because choosing one thing means giving up the possibility of something else. This is one reason commitments are so difficult. Life doesn’t allow us to have everything and do everything and experience everything. But in fact, our joy in this life resides not in refusing to choose, but in experiencing, first, that we are chosen, and then in choosing what our good and loving God desires for us.
May we have the grace of knowing deep in our hearts that, no matter what we have had to let go of in our lives:
“…all things are yours. . . and you are Christ’s,
and Christ is God’s” (1 Cor. 3:21b, 23).