from Lucinda Secrest McDowell
During
this month of October a very historic event will occur which I
will
experience "in absentia" ~ my 25th college reunion at Furman University
in Greenville, South Carolina. I find it almost impossible to believe that
25 years ago (at the ripe old age of 20) I walked away from that venerable
institution of higher learning with an English diploma in hand, ready to take on
the world! And, believe me, the world needed changing...Nixon had just resigned,
we were in a fuel crisis, Vietnam was still taking our best and brightest,
and Jim Croce had been killed in a crash!
But
I was full of Christ's empowering presence and had just
adapted
Isaiah 58:10-11 as my "life verse" ~ to hold before me as a mandate for the rest
of my life: "If you spend yourself on behalf of the hungry and satisfy the
needs of the oppressed, then your light will rise in the darkness and your night
will become as noonday. The Lord will guide you continually, He will satsify your
needs in a sun-scorched land and will strengthen your soul. And you will be like a
well-watered garden, like a spring whose waters never fail."
So...was that promised fulfilled?
Life
has taken me down many different roads since that graduation day
25
years ago. Like Christian in that classic 17th centuray allegory,
Pilgrim's Progress , I have had many companions along the way ~ Hope, Pain,
Despair, Joy, Grace ~ and truly God has somehow both used me and
nourished me for the seemingly impossible tasks He required. No, life hasn't
necessarily turned out the way I dreamt back in 1974 as a new college
graduate, but it has been part of BETTER PLAN than I could hope or
imagine. Because the Lord has never failed me.
I
sincerely wish I had the time and money to attend my 25th college
reunion
at Furman this October. I would love to see old friends. But I must settle
for memories and gratitude for the people and experiences of that most
significant time in my life. However, If I were there I would probably quote a
poem by Robert Frost which meant as much to me way back then as it does now:
"I shall be telling this with a sigh
somewhere ages and ages hence.
Two roads diverged in a wood, and I,
I took the road less traveled by.
And that has made all the difference."
(Robert Frost - The Road Less Traveled)
1999
Lucinda Secrest McDowell
