I’ve had several opportunities over the last several days to think long and hard about the way we choose to live our life and how much we all take for granted. I’ve sung at the funeral of one of my dear cousins, completed a critical book review of “An Hour to Live, An Hour to Love,” and am still reeling from my brother’s new cancer diagnosis. He is the second sibling in my family of four children to have received a cancer diagnosis. (My sister remains in remission – thank you, God!) Surely, if I have been awake on any level over these past two weeks, there is some important message screaming out at me.
It could be the legacy that my cousin Becky left that was so nicely spoken at her funeral: Be quick to forgive and quick to laugh at yourself. After all, unforgiveness really only hurts you, and if you’re anything like me, then you give yourself your best comedic material. Use it.
Perhaps it’s the message of the book I had to review: Tell the people who are important to you how much they mean and why you appreciate them – tell them now. Don’t waste time thinking about, talking about, or fussing over things that wouldn’t matter on your last day of living if you were privileged to know when that day would be.
I don’t know yet what the lesson is in my brother’s cancer diagnosis. Perhaps it could be: Go for your recommended screenings – detection is always better than not knowing! My brother surely didn’t anticipate the outcome of his very first colonoscopy, but I shudder to think of what could have happened had he not taken his physician’s suggestion to have it done.
I think, for me, the things that are most important are 1) that I am living out my assignment in the kingdom of God, 2) that I demonstrate unconditional love and prepare my family for their own calling, and 3) that I live in a way that testifies to the fact that God is still in the business of transforming human lives.
If anyone shares that wish-list with me, the beauty of it is that, lived out, it looks very different for each of us. There is so much beauty and mystery in this world – so much variety and uncertainty. Surviving, we focus on ourselves and what we need the most. In thriving, we appreciate all the beauty, all the variety, all the mystery, and dare to focus on others.
God, grant us all a heart that desires to thrive.
Finding a new "normal" 