When I was young, we didn’t have a television in our home. Then something big happened that changed all our lives.
On November 22, 1963, President John F. Kennedy was assassinated. That event changed everything for us.
My father was really concerned about the news, so he went out and bought our first TV. It was black-and-white, but he wanted to stay up to date on the news about the President.
It also changed my mother. She had two close friends from church who would get together and talk for hours. I never understood what they were talking about, and what I heard didn’t make sense to me.
As time went on, I finally figured out they were discussing soap operas on TV. My mother started watching these afternoon shows with a passion.
When her friends visited, they’d discuss the latest drama on their favorite soap opera. Even when they met in church, a soap opera was one of the first topics they talked about.
I know some people, even in my family, think their lives are like a soap opera. They have so much drama in their lives I wish, like on a TV, there were a switch that I could turn off.
When I was young, I realized life is real. I wish I could make my life into a soap opera with a happy ending, but thankfully, it's not like that.
This year, my wife and I will celebrate 55 years of marriage. I never thought I'd live long enough to see this day. I'll be 75 just before we celebrate our anniversary.
I can honestly say that in those 55 years, I haven’t had a single bad day, and that’s because I have been married the whole time.
Yes, we’ve had our dramatic moments, like when my wife first introduced me to broccoli. That was a soap opera day for sure. Another came when my wife told me she was pregnant. I wasn’t yet 21 and I didn’t know if I could be a father.
It took me a while to work through that soap opera drama, but I finally did when our first daughter was born.
We ended up having two girls and a boy, and that was just the beginning of the drama. If you’ve ever had a bunch of grandchildren visit, you know what I mean.
Soap operas and real life differ because soap operas are carefully scripted and planned. They even redo scenes multiple times.
There’s no script in real life, and every day is a surprise without a repeat. If only I could write my own scenes, I might handle things better. Also, you don't get to redo a scene.
Reflecting on this, I remembered what The Apostle Paul said on this subject in First Corinthians:
“For what man knoweth the things of a man, save the spirit of man which is in him? even so the things of God knoweth no man, but the Spirit of God. Now we have received, not the spirit of the world, but the spirit which is of God; that we might know the things that are freely given to us of God.”
— 1 Corinthians 2: 11-12
My life isn’t a soap opera, but a life of reality through the Holy Spirit, who’s always real.
Dr. Snyder is a former pastor who lives with the Gracious Mistress of the Parsonage, wife Martha, in Ocala, Fla. His email is [email protected].
