So two celebrities die in the last week and this is what I'm doing to Patrick. What is it about sudden deaths that make us pause and think about our own? You would think I would be able to comprehend on a daily basis that I'm not going to be here forever. But I don't. It takes crazy young people dying unexpectedly to get my attention. Or a trip overseas where me and Patrick have to decide, okay, if something happens to us...what do we plan for E?
Usually when this happens I sulk and worry and wonder for a couple of days and then I get back to my daily routine of doing menial things. I carry on and don't think much more about it. This time though, I feel like I've been pushed down and the wind knocked out of me. Why?
Get ready because for the girl who is accused of reading more magazines than books...I'm about to get deep. I believe that something so much bigger than me is trying to shake my shoulders and get my attention and it's working. And I don't know how I feel about it. My YA reading self has been drawn to books called Missional Mom, Theirs is the Kingdom, 7, and Interrupted. All of which discuss the urgent calling of the one I supposedly call savior to take care of the LEAST of these. Widows, orphans, people on the margins, and basically everyone I avoid to be truthful with you and myself.
So, I ask myself, what do I value? What do I find worth living for because I assume it's what I'm doing on a daily basis. This, then makes me ask how I am spending my precious time because apparently "we are but a vapor, a mist." I spend a lot of time consumed with my two year old and husband because that is the nature of the beast. I am a wife and a mother. But is this what I am here to do? Is this it? Not that both of those roles aren't amazing and gratifying because they are. I think I have decided though that the most important thing in life isn't family. It isn't traveling, experiencing new cultures, building a career, drinking wine on my back patio with friends. It isn't making my house a home and being hospitable to just the people I know and enjoy. (Not that these are bad per se, I mean come on, let's consider Jesus' first miracle.)
As Os Guinness says, "It's not about you. It's about the One who calls you." It's not about me as a daughter, a friend, a parent, a wife, a coworker, a social networker (hello). It's about my maker who embraces me and gives me a peace that passes understanding (not this week bc currently we are wrestling). And out of this graciousness and peace should come a sensitivity to the injustices around me. A desire to befriend my widowed next door neighbor, and truly spend valuable time with my down on their luck friends, and feed the hungry, broken woman I pass every day on my way to lunch, and cry when I learn that sex trafficking CHILDREN is so prevalent in our country..yep the good ole USA (umm check...bawled over that news story today).
SO I obviously don't have any answers just ramblings (as per usual) but I do now know this. Eliot is not my mission(gasp). Patrick is not my reason for living (this is hard). When I strip everything down and really think about leaving this place, I want to know that I made myself less and the least, MORE. There is such a gap isn't there? Between our lives and theirs. What if we met in the middle and to do so meant me sacrificing my time and things. I am scared to death. I know this is what it's about for me but it doesn't make it easy because now what? I am not sure but I know that I'll be taking those first steps this week.
I'll keep you posted....
No comments:
Post a Comment