Life Matters

A VERY dear and wonderful friend of mine lost a close friend last week to cancer. My friend had basically been her friend's main caregiver for the last few years, but the activity kicked up about 10 notches in the last 6 months following the doctor's fatal diagnosis. "I'm sorry, there is nothing else we can do for you except to make you comfortable," are words no one wants to hear.

As you can imagine, my friend spent a great deal of time just talking to her sick friend about all kinds of things, and I know how difficult it was during this time. Yet she was incredibly brave and strong for her friend. And when she finally went Home, my friend handled everything like the champ she is. 

The following is an excerpt of writing by Michael Josephson. My friend chose this as one of the pieces that was read aloud at her friend's funeral, and she sent it to me today.

Ready or not, some day it will all come to an end. There will be no more sunrises, no minutes, hours or days. All the things you collected, whether treasured or forgotten, will pass to someone else. Your wealth, fame and power will shrivel. It will not matter what you owned or what you were owed. Your grudges, resentments, frustration and jealousies will finally disappear. So, too, your hopes, ambitions, plans and to-do lists will expire. The wins and losses that once seemed so important will fade away. In the end, it won’t matter where you came from or on what side of the tracks you lived. It won't matter whether you were beautiful or brilliant. Even your gender and skin color will not be relevant.

So what will matter? How will the value of your days be measured?

What will matter is not your success but your significance that enriched, empowered or encouraged others to emulate your example. What will matter is not your competence but your character. What will matter is not how many people you knew, but how many will feel a lasting loss when you're gone. What will matter is how long you will be remembered, by whom and for what. 

Living a life that matters doesn't happen by accident. It's not a matter of circumstance but of choice. Choose to live a life that matters.

I shared the above piece of writing with you because a) it's really well-put and b) because I, too, attended a funeral this week (the grandmother of a coworker). As I sat during the eulogy service for this woman, I was awed by how many lives she had touched. So when I read the above excerpt from my friend, the words really stood out to me as I recalled listening just yesterday to how one woman lived her life in the exact way Josephson describes. Her life MATTERED. The evidence was in every laugh, every memory, every story shared by the people she personally touched. And not one single word spoken had anything to do with money or position or material things. All of these memories had to do with her sense of humor, her wit, her faith in the Lord and how she consistently asked about others and how they were doing in spite of how bad she was feeling.

I had never even heard this woman's name prior to attending her funeral. Yet the way she lived her life monumentally and directly impacted mine! Because she consciously chose to live in a way that MATTERED, she raised her children and grandchildren to live the same way. They grew up being taught how to live a life that matters, and as a result emulated her example, both personally and professionally. Because of this sweet lady, I (a total stranger) have a wonderful job working for a very cool boss who hires people and manages his team (MY team) according to this philosophy. So I sat there in the back of the service and said a little Thank You prayer to God for this woman whom I did not know but whose life had so clearly touched my own. She is greatly missed by those who did know her. Yet, like ripples moving across the water, she will live on through how those folks live because of the impact she had on them. And now she'll live on through me as well. 

The friend who sent Josephson's excerpt to me also lives this way. In fact, God has surrounded me with incredible people who all try and do this to some degree. My past is filled with time wasted on things that no longer matter, and I can't do anything about that. But what I CAN do is consciously choose to matter today.

If I can just do a mere fraction of what this woman, my precious friend and countless others God has placed in my path have done, then I will truly have lived a life that MATTERED... which it can only do as long as it glorifies Christ and makes a difference to others.

Who will remember you, and why? Choose to live a life that MATTERS! 
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Dear Lord, I pray for myself and for every person who reads this to give up and let go of all the little things we hold onto that, in the end, don't enrich our lives or help anyone. I pray that our eyes will be opened to the fact that every single thing we say or do resonates some sort of eternal chord. Whether or not that sound is cacophony or a sweet melody will come down to the decision we make about what really and truly MATTERS. It is my prayer that we will all come to the knowledge that nothing matters more than our relationship with YOU and whether or not we exhibited You to others by how we lived. Amen.

Rain

Courtesy of my friend Rachel.

A little girl had been shopping with her Mom in WalMart. She must have been 6 years old, this beautiful, red-haired, freckle-faced image of innocence. It was pouring outside. The kind of rain that gushes over the top of rain gutters, so much in a hurry to hit the earth it has no time to flow down the spout. We all stood there, under the awning, just inside the door of the WalMart. We waited, some patiently, others irritated because nature messed up their hurried day. I am always mesmerized by rainfall. I got lost in the sound and sight of the heavens washing away the dirt and dust of the world. Memories of running, splashing so carefree as a child came pouring in as a welcome reprieve from the worries of my day.

Her little voice was so sweet as it broke the hypnotic trance we were all caught in, "Mom let's run through the rain," she said. "What?" Mom asked. "Let's run through the rain!" she repeated. "No, honey. We'll wait until it slows down a bit," Mom replied. This young child waited a minute and repeated: "Mom, let's run through the rain." "We'll get soaked if we do," Mom said. "No, we won't, Mom. That's not what you said this morning," the young girl said as she tugged at her Mom's arm. "This morning? When did I say we could run through the rain and not get wet?" 

The little girl said, "Don't you remember? When you were talking to Daddy about his cancer, you said, 'If God can get us through this, He can get us through anything!'"

The entire crowd stopped dead silent... I swear you couldn't hear anything but the rain... We all stood silently. No one left. Mom paused and thought for a moment about what she would say. Now some would laugh it off and scold her for being silly. Some might even ignore what was said. But this was a moment of affirmation in a young child's life. A time when innocent trust can be nurtured so that it will bloom into faith.

"Honey, you are absolutely right. Let's run through the rain. If GOD let's us get wet, well maybe we just need washing," Mom said. Then off they ran. We all stood watching, smiling and laughing as they darted past the cars and yes, through the puddles. They got soaked. They were followed by a few who screamed and laughed like children all the way to their cars. 

And yes, I did. I ran. I got wet. I needed washing.

Circumstances or people can take away your material possessions, they can take away your money, and they can take away your health. But no one can ever take away your precious memories... So, don't forget to make time and take the opportunities to make memories everyday.

To everything there is a season and a time to every purpose under heaven.

I HOPE YOU STILL TAKE THE TIME TO RUN THROUGH THE RAIN.

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This makes me glad for all the times my children and I have played in the rain.

Unlearning

You might not know it to look at me, but I'm kind of a nerd. I love to learn. I am a serious bookworm and have a voracious appetite for books, poetry and great music. I used to read the dictionary and make up games to use the words I had learned (true story). I still do this to some extent, just in a more modern way. The most frequently used app on my iPhone isn't Facebook or ESPN Scorecenter—it's Dictionary.com! I love to learn new things, entertain new concepts, foster new ideas, etc. I HEART my Thesarus! It's not just about the words, though. Basically I just love a really good story.

But that's just me. People are as individual as snowflakes when it comes to personal interests. But whatever those may be, I've come to realize that we are in a constant state of learning. Everywhere, all the time. Whether you are even aware of it or not, it's happening. (Kinda like gravity, yeah?) This is more true today than ever before, since we live in a world where we're bombarded with information. Our brains are like little computers that are perpetually ingesting, processing, filing and using or discarding information. Even when we sleep, we are learning. Our subconscious is playing with concepts and ideas and working things out that don't always make it to the forefront of our consciousness.

So why am I writing about this? Because if learning is constantly happening, that means we are affected by every single thing we see, experience, hear, say, touch. Our environments, circumstances and the people surrounding us are shaping us. Constantly. Ergo, every single moment that passes has a profound (and inevitable) effect on our lives and who we are.

Why is this important? Because it means that one must be both aware and intentional about this learning process. Like everything else in life, learning can be good or bad. Since I was unaware of it for a long time, I let a lot of garbage into my mind and my heart. Once I did become aware of it, I thought that the awareness was enough. I left it unguarded, and just drifted through life, aimless, allowing things to just happen.  I thought I was "flexible." I was really just reckless.

The result of all this was me walking around with a head full of knowledge that was doing me no good at all. I had learned so many destructive patterns of thinking and behavior that there was no room left for anything else. I had a trail of destructive relationships with people who were still living rent-free in my head.

I ignorantly thought more learning was the answer. I relentlessly pursued more and more knowledge, thinking if I just learned the "right things" that I would be able to effect a more positive outcome. Um, yeah. That didn't work out so well. This pursuit of knowledge and all the things I learned sure kept my mind busy. But it didn't do diddly to help me get well. In fact, it just made it worse!

Knowledge is power. That's true. But I had to accept that my thirst for knowledge had merely become an attempt to exercise power where I felt powerless. And it wasn't working.

The process of recovery is as much about UNLEARNING as it is learning. I had to unlearn TONS of utter nonsense. As you grow closer to Jesus during the recovery process, He will begin to transform your mind, cleaning it out and replacing the bad stuff with HIS stuff. All the things I thought I knew were WRONG. In fact, all that "learning" was getting in the way of a better life and coming between me and Jesus. So the first year or so in recovery was more about me unlearning everything… And I DO mean everything!

When I began recovery, it was messy and imperfect. And rudimentary! It's funny to me now but at the time, I basically just did the exact opposite of whatever I would have said or done in the past. Literally! If I got up in the morning and went without thinking to my closet and grabbed a black pair of pants, I would stop, then reach for a white pair of shorts instead. I resisted what came naturally to me because I didn't know how to do it any other way!

I wanted to "do something different." But all I had to go on at first was all the wrong information I'd amassed over my lifetime. So my unlearning started out as just doing the opposite of what I knew until I learned enough right stuff to replace it.

God was able to lessen the extremes of this along the way. But the real learning in recovery didn't happen until I was willing to UNLEARN first. When I stopped analyzing everything to death and trying to find an explanation for everything and just started LIVING THE PRINCIPLES of recovery, things started making sense. When I began to actually live the steps and principles of recovery in my day-to-day life, that is when I truly started to change.

My point is this: It takes faith to change. Faith isn't about what you KNOW, it's about what you BELIEVE. And what you are "learning" at every moment is shaping what you believe. Recovery and a true relationship with Jesus isn't a head thing. It's a heart thing… Faith. The craziest thing about faith is that when you are living it, it doesn't FEEL like faith! But every time you take a step that you wouldn't have ordinarily and take Jesus at His word, that is exactly what faith really is. (I had to unlearn that, too.)

Recovery helped me unlearn the things of my past so that I could live in the present and have a future to look forward to. And I choose to try and stay as aware and intentional in the learning as I can. I try my best to take GREAT care in choosing what people are in my life, what circumstances and situations I allow in, and try to channel every single moment of it toward the Lord. Occasionally there are times when I run into some illusion or notion I didn't even know I had, and I have to unlearn it. Then Jesus can teach me something that has real value in my life.

As usual, life and recovery and all of it are what you make of it. Garbage in, garbage out. Or, JESUS in, JESUS out! Don't sit idly by and allow yourself to learn whatever the world or life wants to teach you. Actively participate in the learning process and channel where it goes. Decide what you want to learn, and take steps to make that happen! In most cases, that intentional awareness will require you to see what you need to UNLEARN first!

What things are in your life today that you might need to UNLEARN?

"Life can only be understood backwards, but it must be lived forward." (Soren Kierkegaard)
"I have come that they may have life, and have it to the fullest." (Jesus Christ)