On Thursday morning, a friend of mine woke up in panic. She
slowly opened her eyes, wondering whether the nightmare from the night before had
finally come to an end. It hadn’t. It was real. It is real! Her life as she
knew it on Wednesday morning is over. Her life as she knew it a week before the
doctors told her he had three weeks to live is over. What nonsense we should
make of this life that we cherish so much.
On Wednesday morning, she woke up a wife and a mother. By afternoon,
she was a widow and a mother, cradling her husband’s lifeless body in her arms.
How cruel this life can be – just when we feel we’ve arrived, it knocks us down
so hard we wonder if we’ll ever get up again. She’s only 38. He was only 42. (I
pray with everything in me that she’ll rise above this intense pain and live
again.)
A mutual friend went to the house to see her yesterday. She
said it was cold inside. I asked her what she meant. She couldn’t explain it,
so I asked her, “do you mean physically cold or just spiritually cold?”
“Spiritually cold,” she answered.
Long moment of silence, as we both contemplated the meaning
of what we had just arrived at.
“Isn’t life funny?” I asked. “Just a few years ago, we
gathered in that same house to celebrate a joyous occasion - the birth of her
third son. I’m sure she woke up on Wednesday morning in one of her good moods.”
“Yeah,” she answered as I imagined her nodding her head in
agreement. “You’re right.”
“Isn’t it weird how in a single space, we can experience
such joy and sorrow, warmth and coldness, rejoicing and mourning?” I
contemplated out loud.
“Wow, you’re right. I never even thought about it that way.
That same house! Today this.”
We ended the call after a little while, both of us sad for a
friend who is widowed at 38 and left to raise three young children on her own. I have been doing a lot of thinking about life
since then.
We say it, and we know it to be true – life is short and so
uncertain. Here today, gone tomorrow; life offering us no guarantees as we plan
for our future. So what do we do? We do the best we can. Seize each moment that
life offers us. Live it and breathe it like we’ll never experience it again. Let
go of the trivial stuff. Let go of regret and the past, and hold on to the
things that matter most in the here and now – God, love, family and friendships
– for all other things are nonsense and really not worth that much time and
effort.
What happens when we live lives contrary to the ones we
should truly be living? What happens when we present false versions of ourselves
to the world? We rob God of glory and honor, rob ourselves of a full and
meaningful life, and rob the world of a special individual with a special
contribution to the world. We exist for a reason, in our truest and most
sincere forms. 
