Don't miss your life

Life wastes itself while we are preparing to live. – Ralph Waldo Emerson



If you had one week left to live, would you still be doing what you’re doing now? In what areas of your life are you preparing to live? Take them off your To Do list and add them to a To Stop list. Resolve to only do what makes you come alive.


Bonus: How can your goals improve the present and not keep you in a perpetual “always something better” spiral?
 
Today's prompt brings to my mind many thoughts.  I am reminded of the song titled "To Live Like You are Dying".  And I can honestly say that I have been blessed with a wife who faced cancer.  She is now an 8 year survivor of cancer. Now this is a blessing I would not wish on anybody.  I also know families who have lost a battle with cancer.  But what cancer can cause you to do, is to live more in the moment of each day, not wanting to miss what that day might bring, might have to enjoy, or what opportunity might be brought with it.  I have been blessed with facing the reality that cancer brings, which is this person that I love might not always be here with me and thus the time I have with them is precious and not to be wasted.
 
I think there is truth in Waldo's statement that life is wasted while we are preparing.  Now is it wrong to prepare?  Certainly its not wrong to prepare, but if preparing causes us to miss life happening right now, then preparing can be over rated.  My friend was talking today and he made the statement you can not be present and be thinking at the same time.  This is the same thread.  Life is always happening, are we always present with it? 
 
I want to do hard enough thinking at select times during my week so that during the rest of my week I can be present while it is happening and experience it. 
 
My wife and I bought a piece of property three years ago.  It is a 20 acre plot of land with woods, pasture, a house and a lake.  We want to turn it into "Grandma and Grandpa Paradise", as well as a place we can enjoy our friends.  So as we have begun to dream about how we want to transform the 20 acres and work on that dream, I have been prompted to remind my wife that we need to focus on the journey and not simply the destination.  The last sentence in today's prompt reminds me of this thought.  I don't want to focus on the fantasy of what my dream might be like and miss out on enjoying the journey. 
 
Finally the middle sentences of today's prompt, "Take them off your To Do list and add them to a To Stop list," causes me to think that this individual who wrote this is in their 20's or maybe early 30's.  I say this because they have not yet learned that we cannot as humans do a To Stop list.  Human nature will not allow us to be successful with a To Stop list, which is the same thing as a list of laws.  We will find it impossible, we will then become discouraged, we will upon discouragement stop and then we will ultimately fail.  Discovering human nature is what our culture calls a mid-life crisis.

Trusting that Jesus loves us and is for us is in my experience the rock that never fails, even as we fail.  It is the rock that allows me to get up again and again, knowing that my trust in Christ is what causes him to unconditionally love me, knowing that his love for me is not dependant upon my effort but was secured by his.  This allows me to keep moving towards the things I feel God has called me to be.  To keep enjoying the journey that he has me on and as C.S. Lewis said, go further up and further in.  I might add that it is further up and further into a delightfully imagined and yet foggy unknown.