By Lois Hewitt

In my 61st year, these are the things I ponder in my dark and sleepless nights.

My youth was led by folly. I chased the world and my idols were on big and little screens. I banged my head to music of things of ill repute. I chased money and shiny things. My mind had no filter, all that entered left by way of a wicked tongue. Anger consumed me like an ever present eternal flame.
I wallowed in depression, obsessions and addicitions.

I treated my body and my health with no regard. I slept little or way too much. I ate only things meant to kill me. Doctors gave me pill after pill to take away pain and make my body work.
What a mess I was. Those, however, were my best of days. The best of my youth….wasted and destroyed.

Now in the later years, maybe not the end but closer, I see the misturns and missteps. I see my youth has all but slipped away.
So now in these later years, I see my biggest mistake was ignoring God.

I lived for myself and endured the fires I created to come out the other side as a different person. Wanting desperately to fall to my knees at the feet of Jesus and beg for His mercy. Wasted was the best years, now only left with the rest. Jesus opens His arms and says “Come my child. I will give you rest.” Oh how unworthy I am to sit at His feet, yet He calls me child. He cares not what brought me here just that I got here.

I lay awake at night reliving the past, but it is my future with Jesus that replaces what was with what is. The person of my youth gone and a new person born willing to make now the best. It’s never too late, my friend, to turn it around. It’s not too late to make now the best.