Five For a Start

You'd think they'd hand out maps or life strategy plans, wouldn't you? No one I ever knew had a map or even a guidebook for life. No three-point outlines. No "Sit down here and let me tell you how this works" kind of advice either. So how was I to know? I just jumped right in, like I did with everything else in my life. Didn't question how or why...just did it! That had always been my way of doin' things from the start. "Just do it." Even before the Nike commercials.Did ya ever wonder why our federal or state court systems don't make you take a marriage test or a kid-raisin' test? Seems to me like that's way more important to the welfare and safety of our society than drivin' a Lexus or a Dodge Ram TufTruck. You have to go the courthouse in any state in America to get a marriage license, but anyone can have a baby and keep it to raise without any kind of previous experience or license. Like I said, no how-to manual. So how does anybody know how to keep a marriage going for a lifetime or raise one, two, three, or more little helpless babies into grown adults fit to govern, heal, lead, and protect our society?Well, I didn't have a manual. No license. No mentor. I just jumped right in with my heart and soul and did the best I could bein' young as I was and all. I was hardly grown myself. Certainly in no way wise to the world or rich enough to get education past high school. At seventeen, I graduated from a little country school with thirty-one kids like me who thought they knew more than they actually did. A few years later, we learned that we really didn't know much at all.Fresh and new at life and ready to jump right in and start livin' it on my own, I was ready!

-- Shirley Havens