Using pattern recognition we can see, for example, with a jig saw puzzle, when a piece is missing, creating a gap in the puzzle.
Or Alfred E. Neumans smile. You can see the gap.
If you think about a gap, you can usually see them… you know something goes there… BUT you may not know what…
For example if I gave you an ignition system from a 1964 Chevy Impala would you know that it needs a gap to operate properly? Where that gap is located?
Or if I asked you, “What is the proper distance, or gap, needed between two vehicles on the highway that will allow for the rear car to brake safely if the front car suddenly brakes?”
Funny thing about a gap though… is that… it is “nothing.”
It’s empty. Void.
Until the proper piece is plugged into the gap, completing the picture, or electrical circuit.
In my journey of success, discovering I am a definite dad, and working on my self image of being a man… I have discovered a gap, that affects my outlook on my manliness.
The gap occurred right as I became a definite dad.
I am missing the component of being “a young man out on his own.”
I went from being an eighteen year old kid… to being a twenty year old dad.
I never lived on my own, even though I left my parents house while still in high school.
I went from one brothers house, to the next, and then moved in with my soon to be wife.
I was only an eligible bachelor from graduation in June to the day I started dating my soon to be wife in October of the same year.
Talking it over with my wife recently, I believe it was for my own good, as my mental state was touch and go back then… if I wouldn’t have met her and married her… I could have just as easily ended up dead in a ditch somewhere.
The Lord certainly does work in mysterious ways.
For now the only thing I can do is lean into God and His Word of being “grafted into the true vine.”
The true vine has gone through all of the growth stages, no gaps. He’s been there since the beginning.
I can’t go back and “fix it,” somehow. That time is past.
Watching my three sons go through that young man stage of growth I would posit that doing so is “better” than not doing so.
I can see my sons making better life decisions for themselves based off of their experience with me, their dad, and having a mom who worries herself ragged over them.
Allowing them to be comfortable and confident in themselves… and being able to ask me and mom for advice when they think they need it.
Understanding that there are gaps in our lives, in a vintage car ignition, in our teeth, can reveal what we need to fill that gap… maybe a healthy self image, maybe a good spark, maybe an Inviso-line mouth piece…
Or… taking a serious look at the gap, realizing it’s not life threatening, you can still chew your food, and the Impala just needs the points cleaned off… you can learn to accept that you may not be able to fill that gap.
It may have to remain.
But remember… it’s nothing, it is a void, nothing is in your way of moving through it into your next life stage.
A door is only a door when it’s closed… open it… and it reveals a gap… think about that for a minute.
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