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Someday, I'll get a life
"Oh, get a life!"
This impatient admonition is usually offered by someone who couldn't possibly care less about the life I live.
News flash. I have a life. This is it.
So do you. And this is it. Wherever you are, whatever you're doing, this is it. This is your life.
All too often, throughout my "this is your life" journey, I was waiting.
Waiting to grow up. Waiting to get my driver's license. Waiting to get married. Waiting to become a mother. Waiting for the children to grow up.
(How well I remember, after legalized gambling came to Colorado, how impatiently I waited to win the lottery. Finally, I would be able to be generous. Truth to tell, I battle a stingy spirit. I always have. Winning the lottery has nothing to do with having a generous spirit. A generous spirit is cultivated by trusting God with every need, not by accumulating so much of something that you're finally willing to share it. I gave up on the lottery a long time ago. Any generosity I am able to exercise is the direct result of God's work, not the state's.)
In any case, with the approach of each milestone, I was convinced that when that particular event finally happened, I would be fulfilled. And, momentarily, I was. And then I would begin the interminable wait -- for the next thing.
Just a few short weeks before Mom succumbed to cancer, I was at the county clerk's office renewing our license plates. The line was long, so I picked up a magazine to help pass the time. An article in the magazine revealed that a particular drug, used in the mid-fifties to stop pre-term labor, increased the mother's chance of contracting breast cancer by a significant percentage.
Yikes, I thought while reading, Mom had fallen down a flight of stairs one day while doing laundry. The laundry basket, filled with wet clothes, landed on her abdomen. She was some five months pregnant with me, and the accident sent her to the hospital where the resulting pre-term labor was stopped, using this particular drug.
I was horrified. My mother was critically ill, her strength waning with every passing day, and according to this article, I could be at least partially responsible for her condition. I had to wonder, would Mom have made the same choice on that long ago day had she known the suffering she would endure, had she known how short her own days would be?
It was a moot point. What was, was, and it could not be changed.
Nevertheless, a few weeks after her death, I was in the bathroom, putting on my face in preparation for a short stint as a lunch lady substitute. As I applied the makeup, I pondered Mom's life, cut short before she could celebrate her 50th birthday and then and there, promised myself, and her, that I would not waste the life she had given me. Whether or not she knew the full cost at the time, I believed her sacrifice should be honored by her daughter, who that day finally outgrew petty resentments and rebellions. I got busy "getting the life" she had given me.
"Oh, get a life!"
I have one. This is it. The high points, the low. Somedays I am on the mountaintop, reveling in all that God has accomplished in my life. Other days find me in the valley, wondering why I bother; wondering why he bothers.
In either case, I have only to remember that night in the garden, when Jesus prayed that the cup would pass by, but didn't refuse it, to find a heart of gratitude. I have but to remember his calm demeanor in the face of false accusations and how he endured the stripes I earned landing on his back to know that, high or low, every breath is a gift. And just a glimpse of the cross on Calvary stops me in my tracks. Petty resentments flee. Anxiety disappears. Hearing him cry, "Father, forgive them," I am suddenly able to forgive.
I have a life. This is it. It is a new life, every day, given to me by the one who fully understood the enormity of the sacrifice and paid it anyway. That sacrifice must be honored.
"And we pray this in order that you may live a life worthy of the Lord and may please him in every way: bearing fruit in every good work, growing in the knowledge of God, being strengthened with all power according to his glorious might..." Colossians 1:10-11 (NIV)
Things you won't see in heaven: Tears of regret
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