David McElroy

When I was a little boy, the wait for Christmas each year seemed to take forever. Even in the summer — or even after school had started back in the fall — the weeks until Christmas went by at a snail’s pace.

If you can remember being a child — and dreaming about what you might get for Christmas or whatever holiday your family celebrated — you probably remember feeling the same way.

When you’re 5 years old, the time until another Christmas represents 20 percent of the time you’ve been alive. That might as well have been forever back then.

When I thought about what I would be in the future — when I got old enough to start having oversized ambitions for myself — my life seemed to stretch to eternity. My parents had lived half their lives. My grandparents have lived most of theirs. But I had forever to become what I was meant to be.

For the first time in my life, I feel a clock ticking. I no longer have forever. I have decades left in which I can live and love, but the years are flying by. The time from one Christmas to the next is now a blur.

I still have plenty of time, but it’s no longer forever. And for the first time in my life, I’m feeling a fear I’ve never known. What if I don’t find the love and the life I’ve always needed?

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As sheriff’s deputies directed the removal of furniture from her apartment, Alison sat on the front steps looking at her phone. Her bright pink t-shirt had glowing orange letters that said, “This is my lucky t-shirt.”

But after nine months of not paying rent and violating other terms of her lease, Alison’s luck had run out.

When I met her last year — when she applied to rent from me — I felt sorry for Alison. She told me about her difficult past. A failed marriage to a dysfunctional man. Drug issues and recovery. Financial problems. But she said she had turned everything around. Her supervisor at work gave her a glowing endorsement.

In the five years that I’ve been managing rentals for my company, she’s the only person I’ve regretted renting to. She left owing us thousands and thousands of dollars. Cleaning up and repairing the apartment will cost even more.

But as she sat there in her lucky t-shirt — two days after having her third child — I still felt sorry for her. And it hurt my heart to think about what could have brought this attractive blue-eyed blonde to such despair.

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I recently watched a little boy trying to get candy from one of those old-fashioned gumball machines. I rarely see such machines now, but I was in a neighborhood hardware store that hasn’t changed much since the 1950s.

The boy was frustrated, because he couldn’t figure out how to work the machine. He kept trying to place a quarter inside the chute where the gum or candy comes out. He tried to turn the crank, but he didn’t understand that the quarter had to be placed into a slot.

I attempted to show him where to put the quarter, but he wouldn’t listen. He was angry at the machine and ignored me — and kept making the same mistake.

“It’ll never work that way,” I gently told him in a friendly way, “because you’re doing it wrong.”

In the last few days, I’ve found myself thinking about that little boy. I’ve been watching all of the unhappiness and anger and misery of the world around me. I’ve been thinking about the things I see people doing that I know are never going to give them peace and joy. And I keep thinking about what God must think when he looks at his creatures.

“Your lives are never going to work this way,” he must think, “because you’re doing it all wrong.”

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