Priorities
With everything that Dad has been through the past 6 weeks, it has really caused me, all of us I am sure, to stop and think about whats really important in our lives. In our hustle and bustle society we live in, we sometimes can get caught in the day to day rut, disguising itself as “progress.” Please don’t misunderstand me, I know that we all have to do what we have to do to make a living and support our families, I just hope that we are taking intentional time to invest towards our priorities. I am not going to lie, when I got the call that Dad had early stage mouth cancer, I was scared to death and even sick to my stomach. I never wish that on anyone. I know some of you have had to deal with much worse circumstances, but it doesn’t ever make it any easier when someone you love has to go through something like that. I am so grateful that everything is going well and we praise God for that! My hopes for writing this is that we all sit down and make a list of our top priorities and then ask ourselves: how much time and attention are we giving to them?
No regrets
In life, the only certainty is uncertainty and the only constant is change. Things happen outside our control and only God knows why. Its hard to wrap our minds around, but true nonetheless. My prayer for us all would be, when we get to the end of our lives, that we don’t have regrets about how and with whom we spent our time with. If we are all honest, I think we would agree that we are eternally made in God’s image and that this life is not all there is. I believe that we will be judged on how we live our lives and when it comes down to it at the end, I believe that it will be our regrets about the things we didn’t do, that will weigh the heaviest on us. I am directing this post to myself because I feel convicted that I haven’t been as intentional with my relationships as I picture myself being. I sometimes buy the lie that I am “too busy” for this or that. Not anymore! This experience has made what I am talking about very real to me and I am not going to take for granted the time I have left with the people I know and love.
Final thoughts
Time is so precious and finite, in fact, Mark Twain said it this way: “time is the only resource that we don’t know how much we have left and the only thing that we can never get back, so use it wisely.” I hope this post doesn’t come off as abrupt or preachy, I just had it on my heart to share because I know that unforeseen circumstances can happen to any one of us at any time. And if we keep these thoughts about investing our time very intentionally at the front of our minds, I think we will be able to better enjoy our families, friends and relationships we have that make life so rich and joyful.
Thank you all again for your prayers, thoughts, phone calls, visits, blog comments and well wishes. They are so appreciated and have greatly helped us all through this process. It is very evident that my Dad is a great example of living out what I have been writing about in this post. God Bless everyone and have a great day.
Steve's Status 