I remember, as if it were yesterday, standing at my school bus stop adjacent to my small Oklahoma country High School and watching the Seniors climb aboard their buses. Their High School days were almost over, and then they could leave for the “real world” where life truly begins!
In but a blink, I was there also – a High School Senior, leaving my school bus for the very last time, headed to the University where the “real world” would commence.
Very soon thereafter, I came to understand that here I had to learn discipline and work so that when I graduated, I could finally exit the university environment and truly enter the exciting “real world” outside the campus property where a career, family, and income certainly began.
College graduation day ultimately happened – but I found myself engaged in the struggles and even more rigorous and far more disciplined environment of the US Naval Officer’s Candidate School. It was quite obvious that this was certainly not the “real Navy,” which awaited me after graduation. Immediately following OCS, everyone assured me that my series of training schools was not the “real Navy” either. That world was only attained after the classrooms finally end.
But of course!
Finally, I boarded my first ship of the fleet – a destroyer. But no sooner was I there than I was warned that the “tin-can Navy” was not the actual “real Navy,” which was exclusively found in the significant action of the larger ships of the line and submarines.
Not ever able to discover the elusive “real Navy” even after 6 years, I moved on to engineering graduate school where I was informed by professors and fellow students alike that, obviously, the “real world,” again, existed off campus where “real” professions were found.
Once at grad school, I took a hard look in the mirror and immediately convinced myself that my actual career was not to be found anywhere but as a NASA engineer – and only after I entered official NASA employment at the Kennedy Space Center would I finally discover the “real” world at last.
After receiving my Master of Engineering degree, I entered federal service, walked across my office threshold, and, to my astonishment, discovered that the “real world” wasn’t there either. I didn’t want to work the rest of my life “for the man.” I wanted a full-time writing career so that I could be my own boss, explore all I wanted to, and do whatever I wanted!
After 30 years at that desk, a disheveled and quite frazzled government fairy landed on my right shoulder, annoyingly tapped my ear with her wand, and stated, “You can go home now and finally find the ‘real world’ as you have always imagined it would be!”
So I did.
On this very morning, waking up in the actual “real world” every day now as I have for eight years, i find myself on each morning responsible only for myself. And here is what I have discovered:
The greatest treasures, fondest joys, and deepest fulfillment are bounded not at all by circumstances but instead by each sunrise and each sunset.
Every day of our lives is written one chapter at a time by the God-inspired events our Righteous Father leads us into each day. All of those chapters are bound in a book titled with our names but authored by our Lord Master. Every chapter – the happy ones, the triumphant ones, and the ones filled with stunned discouragement, failure, dread, and tears, which also include the days jam-packed with success and breathtaking beauty – all make up the biography of our souls in the real world. Every day that we live, regardless of age or circumstance is found exactly where our Lord Master has placed us, wherever His trustworthy path may lead in that “real world” where He places us each day.