Walk the walk!

     There seems to be many different ways to walk.  The first is the walk of babies with their wobbly and falling often.  Sometimes they need a helping hand.  They go from total dependence to the place where they can walk on their own.  For many people this is the end of life stage as well.  When we see people with canes and walkers it's reminiscent of a small child.  And so the beginning is all about the end.  Failure to remember where we started will lead us to frustration when the discovery is all about our latter years and dependence on others.
     The second stage is those years including the first ride on a bike only to crash and burn quite a few times.  Hand, eye and foot coordination is formed during this time and to some degree puts us on the path of performing with our talents.  Expectations are still there but not in the same way they were in the first stage.  This stage too has a corollary to our end years.  This stage is marked by the loss of security in our own movements, driving, and many other areas of life.  If we don't realize this as a stage of life, we only set ourselves up when the time comes to be dependent on a device or person.
     Thirdly, is the freedom stage upon which our prime time in sports and work begin to cement in our lives.  We have been the athlete, dancer, skater, or whatever our life demanded.  People learn to "walk" the way of their peers.  Changing the way we think, act, and exist is important to the degree that we will have this "freedom" increase with the end of schooling and the beginning of making a living.  At the end of this stage we begin to assimilate into society and do the expected and not the unexpected.  Status quo is where we are at this time.  This is a transitional time in our lives and the plans we have are set in stone at the beginning and at the end seem to be made of jello.
     The fourth and final stage is the retirement transition time.  We now have the freedom to learn what we want, accomplish what we want, and rest in what we want.  Those retirement years are understood differently by us as individuals, culturally, and in our masculine or feminine world.  It's a sad time for many as they see their (for the first time for some) "worth" diminish with time.  Their being needed begin to deteriorate and importance shifts to the next generation.  For many, their sadness surfaces as the realization of where we are left in the process is a real shock.  Feeling needed less and less coupled with deaths of friends and family inch us toward that time when we are no longer needed and sometimes not wanted as well.
     Where we long to have our lives lived at the level of our greatest time, we cannot bank on that happening.  We have a beginning ad an end in all levels and to all people.  There is another area we should look at in beginning to end of walk the walk.  Each stage of our Christian life follows the stages listed above.  The achievements of each stage should be foremost in all of the stages.  We walk different stages in different ways.  Our world does have an input into where and how we walk.  Jesus has a walk he wants you and I to do.  He wants us to allow Him to live in and for us.  Ownership of the walk the walk then is dependent upon how much we give ourselves to Him. 
     Yes, we will all grow old and somewhere along the way we will die.  For the Christian the end is only the beginning where we have a new walk, on a new world, in a new way,  Streets of gold await us.  We will never tire or be hindered.  Walk the walk.