Last Holiday

I was watching this movie the other night; it left me with a sharp conviction and I felt led to share it...

I believe there comes a time in everyone's life when they realize that it's length is dream; they are suddenly snapped into its brutal reality called 'short.' Everyone has varying thresholds to the onset of this stark reality. It could be the death of a family member--sibling, parent, grandparent--a close friend, a classmate. Or maybe a personal tradgedy, to either yourself or someone you love, a natural disaster, watching your kids grow up before your very eyes or so many others. It only really happens once before you are reminded an infinite number of times. But all leave you with the same question--what am I really living for??

In a twisted way I feel incredibly blessed to have stumbled upon this question at such a young age. For me it came with the personal tragedy of losing my leg, but not just that, the overwhelming report that I should not have lived. I was supposed to have bled to death except for an artery in that leg that I never knew I was born without. God had it all in his perfect plan, for many reasons of course, but the most important personally was to force me to come to peace with the fact that I could have died, right then and there, at age 16--no drivers license, no big senior year of high school, no college life with all of its own experiences. Nothing.

But there is something perplexing and magical about not dying when you are "supposed to" that is permanently engrained in your mind and screams "Live! Really Live!!" For me this is where God really took ahold of the steering wheel in my life. There was one night in the hospital I was feeling particularly discouraged and one of my doctors ended up sitting beside me on my hospital bed with two very clear messages. The first was this, "Blossom where you are planted." And she stressed that it started right there in that hospital room despite the fact I couldn't even get out of bed. God had planted me there as well as divinely planted every doctor and nurse that walked through that door, and I was to get going on blossoming for Him. But the second thing was that all pain that we as humans experience can be used to bless someone else, if we choose. Pain is something one only understands by experience, obviously, but it is also a specific tool that can be used by God to fuel compassion and understanding of others in similar pain.

Now its one thing to realize that the length of life is a dream, but it's another in what is done with it. I promised God that day that I would never take advantage of another step or breath or opportunity to share His name, but guess what? I have. I'm one of those crazy sinners He created, BUT, lucky for me, He is also a crazy awesome forgiver.

In the end, it doesn't matter what "livng everyday to it's fullest" means to you--that's up to God. But it is our responsibility to do it, whether its in a hospital bed, an office chair, on the moon, in a classroom, at the grocery store, etc. None is greater than another in God's eyes as long as it is to the fullest.