I’m sure I was smarter back at my college graduation days. Certainty was not a problem and I was prepared to take on the world. So I thought. But time has a way of teaching you lessons no one else can. So I’m a bit older and perhaps somewhat wiser, I hope. Here’s some of my certainties at age 22:

Life is black or white. You’re either on the side of truth or not.  At 22 I saw a world with very few shades of gray. It was either right or wrong and ambiguity was the playground of the weak.

God was precise and predicable. Somehow the God of my early twenties was more like a German engineer than an artist. He was like a machine with a defined pathway to action and subsequent reactions rather than a mysterious and yet gracious being who eludes being imprisoned by human intellect.

By the time I graduated from college I had succeeded despite my parents’ attempts to ruin my life.

I couldn’t wait to meet the lucky girl who would get me for a husband. A blessing like me doesn’t come along very often.

I knew more about running a church than my boss who had been in ministry for more than 30 years.

Americans would never pay more than $2 for a cup of coffee.

I was holding on to my Members Only jacket because it would never go out of style. (Well, they’re back!)

It’s your turn. What did you know for certain at 22 that life has since shown you differently?