Just got off the phone with Mom for our afternoon check-in call.
My father passed away when I was 17. In reality, his death came a year sooner, because the stroke left him a shell of the person he once was, for the last year of his life. I was the youngest of six children and my siblings had all moved away and started families of their own by the time Dad died. After his death, I changed college plans, stayed in Durango, graduated from the small local college, and then went into the Air Force Officers Candidate School and information systems engineering program. With my departure, Mom started living alone in 1983. For virtually my entire adult life, I wondered and worried how, given the nature of my profession, I would ever be able to move back to Durango, make an affordable living in a town of 12,000 population, and care for Mom when the time came.
In December of 2010, while sitting on the couch one morning, staring out at the beach in the Cayman Islands, I decided to stop worrying about how a move back to Durango might occur and simply commit to the decision and hope that the "how" of the details would iron themselves out, leaving those details to God. I was willing to live like a pauper if that's what it took. Mom's time on earth was slipping away while I let the fear of an unknown path stand in the way of the commitment.
The rest is history. It all came together. Later this evening, I'll stop by Mom's house on he way back from the gym and check in on her. She'll be 89 years old in a few months.
It seems there's a bigger lesson underlying this specific situation. The path is not always clear, but the commitment can be. Make the commitment, and if the commitment is pure, the path will clear.
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