Priorities (3 of 5)

Sher asks: If you were told you had only one year left to live, what would you do?  What would you change, if anything, in your life?

I must say that a lot in my life would change.  Some of these changes would be changes that I should make in my life anyway ... I need to read the scriptures more, I need to spend more one on one time with my kids, I need to be less verbally critical of my family and less critical in my head of others.  I need to write in my journal and I need to throw away a lot of junk.  I need to go on more walks with my husband and kids.  I need to relax.

But there are many things that I'd change simply because priorities change with time.  When I am working on my "list" for Christmas, things start getting cut the closer I get to the holiday.  Does that mean that these were bad or not worthy of my time to begin with?  No.  All it means is that finding myself down to 4 days left, I need to start deciding what is absolutely essential, or nothing will get completely finished.  So if I were to learn that I only had a year to live, instead of the 40-50 more that I anticipate, I'd begin to cut out the non-essential.  That would include blogging.  That would even include being my son's team mom.  I'd still happily go to the games, but I doubt I'd spend my limited time to make sure everyone remembers their week to bring the snack.  I wouldn't worry about losing weight.  I'd hire someone to clean the house if I could afford it.   Like most of us, these changes would largely revolve around my family and my God and finding ways to spend every possible moment with them.

Some of you may argue that we never really know how much time we have left.  I could get hit by a bus tomorrow.  (It's always a bus, isn't it?)  Absolutely.  And I agree that I should work on those things listed in the first paragraph because of it.  But if I live my entire life assuming that it will be short, I will miss out on a lot of great non-essentials.  My kids would feel smothered.  I've written before about the end of summer and the growing pit in my stomach which develops as I worry that I'm not making the most of my remaining vacation time.  It makes for a less enjoyable time off.  I think the same would happen if I assumed my life was ticking down to a premature finish.  That's no way to live.

I am thankful for a long life expectancy and relative good health.  I am thankful that the days are getting longer again.  I am thankful for the beautiful rainbow we saw out our front window yesterday.  May we all live life a little more fully and be happy with where we are.