Fulcrum

What was the most pivotal year in your life? For some, it will be sixteen — the day they got their driver’s license or when they graduated from high school or college. Perhaps it was their first job. For others, it will be the day they married…or had a child…or lost a spouse or parent.

For me, it was my eighth year on this planet. I know. It seems terribly early. How, one may ask, can the entire direction of one’s life be determined at so early an age? I wonder that, too, some times. Yet over the years as I have answered questions such as, “When did you know you wanted to go to college?” “When did you know you would never get married?” “When did you know you would become your brother Mike’s guardian?” all of the answers go back to that pivotal year of 1961.

Eight years old — third grade. In school, I was smart. My mother was already pushing me to consider a career in nursing. That’s what smart girls did. That, or become a teacher, which in 1961 was pretty much a guarantee of living a life of genteel poverty. Nurses made more money. While I loved science, I knew nursing was not for me. I had heard too many stories from my eldest sister who was a nurse. So,, if I didn’t want to be a store clerk, factory worker, or secretary, I knew I had to go to college. (What I really wanted was to be an astronaut, but in 1961, that was not an option for girls)

As for marriage? Well the cruel taunts of many of my classmates had already wormed their way into my psyche, convincing me I was, and would forever be too fat and ugly to ever attract a mate. And Mike? Yes, my eldest brother had solemnly promised our father that he would take responsibility for our developmentally disabled younger brother if anything happened to our parents. But even at that age, I knew he would never do it.

Pretty deep thoughts for an eight-year-old, right? What I didn’t realize, what may parents didn’t realize, what my teachers didn’t realize is that I was already fully in puberty when I started third grade. This was only confirmed the “day I became a woman” on the last day of school. A month later, my father had his first heart attack. Suddenly, our family was plunged from blue-collar, lower middle class into poverty as he was unable to find work. Suddenly, I had a lot more responsibility as my mother did home daycare to make ends meet and watching the day care children became part of my daily routine. My Dad taught me to read a map and from then on I rode shotgun, instead of my Mom on family trips. He taught me what to do should he have another heart attack while behind the wheel. He showed me where the water and natural gas shutoffs were and how to change a fuse in the basement. And just a few years later, he taught me how to balance the family checkbook and prepare the family tax returns, handing off that responsibility to me.

Within just two years, our family at home shrunk from eight people to four as my older sisters married and my older brothers moved out. By age eleven, I was babysitting for my sisters’ children, and then taking on paying babysitting gigs as well. I was twelve when I got my first job as a library aide, in order to pay my high school tuition.

It seemed my course in life was set from that one year forward.

And the questions? Yes, I did go to college and graduate school, although neither my coursework nor the career paths to which they led were straightforward. No, I never did marry, although there was one bright but brief year when I thought that might be a possibility. And yes, I am my brother’s keeper, and will be until one of us is gone.

All of that is from a worldly, earth-bound perspective. Because what is really the fulcrum, what is really the most pivotal moment in a person’s life is not the thoughts and dreams one has, is not the circumstances that push one in one direction or another. The pivotal point is what answer one gives when asked, “Who do YOU say Jesus Christ is?”

Yet I am a little bit fuzzy on that point myself. I can indeed point to a certain day in October of 1973 when I answered that exact question as it was put to me by two interlopers as I was studying for midterm exams. But it goes back further. My Pastor says it is his belief that it takes two things for a person to bend the knee to Jesus — the movement of the Holy Spirit and someone praying for the person. One of my aunts told me that when my mother was pregnant with me, she took fifteen minutes out of every busy day of caring for a husband and four children to pray for me, the reason being that she had lost three babies after the birth of my middle sister, accounting for the eight year gap between us. Then, in my baby book, my mother recorded that I was saying the Lord’s Prayer, on my own at the age of two-and-a- half. Obviously, I may not have understood all that my mother taught me to say, but she had pointed me in the right direction. First Communion, Confirmation — both approached with great anticipation — and met with mild disappointment at the seemingly mundane lack of response from heaven.

And then the years of walking away from the faith. The decline began in my early teens but I didn’t make the final break until the day after I graduated from high school. But God. But God did not allow me to wander far, or for too long a time. A question from two interlopers interrupting my studies brought me face to face with the truth — the truth of who Jesus Christ really was and is. A truth that demanded a response from me. What else could I do but surrender to His authority?

We all have moments in life when and where the path we are on forks. Two, three, four, or even more choices lie ahead. Which way do we go? Which path do we choose? The choice may come early. It may come late. Whichever way we go, it will set the stage for what comes next. But of all the choices before us, there is one choice on which, not our education, not our marital status, not our career, not our prosperity, but our eternity rests. The fulcrum, the tipping point, the pivot — Who do you say Jesus Christ is? And will you follow Him?