Would I?

I recently read a pastoral resignation letter in which the pastor explained his reasons for leaving his current pastorate. Including in the letter was a question he and his wife had been pondering: if we only have five or 10 years left, how do we want to spend them?

His question stems from surviving cancer. I believe any individual who has fought and survived a serious illness has a very different appreciation for life and time here on earth than the rest of us. As I read the resignation letter, the question stuck with me and a thought has been bouncing around my mind ever since: isn't that how we should all live on a daily basis?

How different would our lives look, would my life look, if we were fully living in the understanding that life is but a breath and there may be 40, 15, 5 or one year left? Would I be slower to speak and quicker to listen? Would I give more and take less? Would I invest in the lives of those around me with less thought to what I want or need? Would I take steps to heal relationships that need mending instead of putting it off or ignoring it because I don't want to open the emotional Pandora's box that could be waiting? Would I write a book?

A friend recently said, "Life is fragile." She spoke the truth.

In the past four years, I've lost three friends and an aunt to cancer. I hate cancer, but that's another topic altogether. Walking through cancer with people I love has changed my life in a thousand ways and multiplied my faith hundreds of times over. It has taught me two things: I don't fear death, at least not to the degree that I might have before, and I need to embrace the life I've been given because it can change with one phone call, with one careless driver, with one (fill in the blank).

I don't fear death because I know God has numbered my days and I believe that eternal glory awaits after this life is over. Some days I embrace life well; other days I waste more time than I should. Some days I listen well and intently; other days I'm impatient and careless with my words and forget that the person across from me is a gift.

B and I don't have a lot of big dreams and honestly, we are generally able to pursue the ones we do have. Last year, we went to Alaska for his 50th birthday. Why? Because he's always wanted to go and we know that we don't know what tomorrow holds. I'm not advocating reckless abandonment of common sense, but we realize that embracing life fully (which is different than selfishly) is paramount to how we want to live our lives. It's still far too easy for us to get caught up in the minutiae of the demands of daily life, but we strive to remember that we want to live our lives well.

Tim McGraw's song, "Live Like You Were Dying," is one that sticks with you. It particularly sticks with me because B dreams of going skydiving and my vote is still a pretty firm "no" because, well, that seems to fall in the aforementioned category of "reckless abandonment." But I digress. We should live like we are dying because we are. I don't mean that to be macabre, but we're not getting younger, time doesn't go backward. We should be looking to live in ways that fulfill our purpose here on earth, honoring God and loving others.

Ann Voskamp (www.aholyexperience.com) wrote about approaching a milestone birthday. She said, "Your choice is either receive your life or reject your one chance at living and you can ask all you want where does the time go, but it doesn’t get stuck under the couch. The point is that your life is meant to be spent. The point is that your life is meant to be used up and every wrinkle means you are wringing out the good of the wonder of this thing called life."

Let's go forth and embrace our lives. And create a few wrinkles while we're at it.