Keep following moral principles of our faith

New graduates will soon be taking their first steps toward an independent adulthood. For those of us at the other end of the age spectrum, it is interesting to look back at the people, experiences, or conditions that shaped our own life's journey.
While I was working overseas, I visited my relatives in Slovakia and happened to drive past a woman who was walking up a steep hill with a load of twigs three times her size strapped to her back. She wore heavy shoes, a peasant skirt with a tattered sweater and a babushka over her head. Her body was bent forward to balance the load on her back. As I looked at her, I wondered if that could have been my fate if my parents had not emigrated to the United States.
There are always surprises in life and sometimes our plans take a dramatic turn when the unexpected happens. An old film that I saw when I was quite young illustrates this experience. In "The Blue Veil," Jane Wyman plays a nursemaid who takes care of children of wealthy families. She and the gardener on the estate have developed a relationship and when he takes a new position, he asks Jane to marry him and make the move with him.
Deciding to stay
As they are loading their belongings into the car to make the move, a sudden storm develops. Tommy, the youngest child, begins to cry. Jane says she cannot leave because the parents are away and the other staff would not be able to comfort him, as he is terrified of storms. The gardener says he has to leave as scheduled but will return for her when he is settled.
Jane checks the mail daily but she never hears from the gardener again. She continues working, moving from family to family as children grow older and go off to school, until the agency says that they can no longer place her because of her age. She rents a room in a modest boardinghouse and takes whatever work she can find. In the last scene, she is in her room counting out her rent money and comes up short just as there is a knock at the door. It is Tommy, the child afraid of storms. He is a grown man with a family of his own. He says he has been looking for Jane so that he can take her to live with his family.
It feels good when a movie has a happy ending but life doesn't always turn out that way.
St. Paul tells us not to be distracted by the condition of our life as long as we are following the moral principals of our faith. In his letter to the Philippians, St. Paul writes in 4:12-13, "I have mastered the secret of all conditions: Full stomach and empty stomach, plenty and poverty. There is nothing I cannot do in the One who strengthens me." His purpose is to inform and inspire the new Christians in spite of the fact that he is in chains in a prison.
As long as we have a strong moral compass, it doesn't matter if we are carrying sticks, being a nursemaid to young children, or preaching the gospel, our lives will have meaning in the deeper purpose of life.
Agnes Martinko, Ph.D., is a member of St. Edward's Church, Youngstown.