I sit out on the back deck, feet propped up on the table. The birds are singing, the sun shines warm and I can even smell the scent of the garden.
Honeysuckle! It smells like honeysuckle.
The other day I had listened to an older podcast. A Kate Bowler podcast from 2018 titled Costly Love, with guest Lucy Kalanithi. She ended the time with personal reflection and a question that keeps coming back to me.
Am I living a life that would hurt like hell to leave?
When you live having seen loss or grief (which most of us have on some level) you have a choice to make. You can build walls to protect yourself from more pain. You can be angry and resentful, lashing out at the world around you. Or you can attempt to figure out how to live life to the fullest. Daring to reimagine, to dream new dreams, to embrace the moments you are given each and every day.
I find myself inspired by those who travel roads facing chronic illness, hard painful loss, and broken dreams. Those who dare continue to live life to the fullest. To live fully in the moment. They love deeply, they live right where they are, knowing today counts because today might be all we have.
I continue to process life with a chronic illness, an unexpected road I am now traveling. I pray that I can be brave enough to follow the examples of those who have boldly embraced their journeys. I want to live in a way that I know it will hurt like hell to leave what I have behind when that time comes. I want to live each day as if it counts, it matters.
In the book Suffer Strong Katherine Wolf shares a prayer she says with her boys. (By the way, if you haven’t read Suffer Strong by Jay and Katherine Wolf, I highly recommend)
“God made you to do the hard things in the good story He’s writing for your life. Whether tomorrow is the best or worst or last day of our lives, we pray that God will give us everything we need to live out to the fullest with courage and joy.”
Katherine Wolf
No matter what we face, as hard and as heartbreaking as it may be, God has given us strength enough to choose how we live out our story. We can not always decide on our circumstances. But we can always decide how we live out the circumstances we have before us.
Be Brave, Be Strong, Be True!
“Tell me, what is it you plan to do
-Mary Oliver’s Poem “The Summer Day”
With your one wild and precious life?”
