Where does the time go? Whether it is just a day, or even my life, it seems to go by too quickly. I always remember the expression, “you have to take the time to smell the roses,” but I often wonder what time???
I will be turning 47 next week, on the same day that Garfield the Cat has a birthday, though he is closer to twenty. I don’t often think about birthdays, nor do I seem to ever get my age right even when I am trying to be serious about it. But as I was watching a news program last night they shared the “good news” that my average life expectancy has just gone up……to 74. Whooooop-teee-dooooo. I’m just under 30 years from an average end, and so far that disappoints me, because I believe that I am living an all-too-average life!
No no no…..I am not having a mid-life crisis, Lord knows I have seen too many of those destroy people’s marriages and lives. But I am at the point where I want to focus more. I used to do an exercise with people where I gave them a piece of paper and asked them to write down on one side how they wanted to be remembered. I then had them flip it over to write, if they went home to the Lord that evening, in truth, how WOULD THEY be remembered. What people tend to find in this exercise is that there are some major incongruencies on the two sides of the paper. (And also in their lives!) And as for me, I thought I was doing a better job, but clearly I am seeing some major incongruencies in mine.
The stroke, though a big wake-up call for things like this, also confused my focus to the hilt. But I hope to get it all back and more. I will be heading to speech therapy for the FIRST TIME today, and that is a big thing in that though my speech is doing well, I am admitting I am not able to do this all by myself. (I have been trying to do that you know) But I am committed this day also to get off the “stupid train,” and stop with the “I’ll do it tomorrow” attitude. Every day counts, and apparently some statistician has said I have a few few more of them if I am average…..I intend however, to leave average behind.
About two years ago, I made the decision to change my life in order that it would be congruent with my beliefs, and to do so I began the process to retire from the Episcopal Church. I did at the end of 2006. Though I had been a part of it my entire life, I could no longer stay there. I and a few others then started a church from nothing, and it has grown into three churches and would have been four already if I had not had the stroke. The fourth will however, launch in September. But my point is that those changes I was living made my life far from average.
But the stroke clearly has pulled me back toward where I need NOT be. I need to be out more talking about what I believe and why. The Good Lord has not called me to live a mediocre life, or a life anywhere near average, and in truth, He does not call you to that kind of life either. I want you to know that He calls you to more than what you are living now, and I believe I am called to show you and others that “more.”
You see, all in all, life really IS short and we are called to make the most of it while we are here. We are not called to see which way the wind is blowing, or do things because others do them, or think that we always will have tomorrow. We are called to act, and to act today.
Let me ask this: What do you believe? And then even more importantly, what are you going to do about it?
Live the life the Lord has given you, and live it with conviction. I know I intend to!
Be strong and of good faith!
Fr. Tom+