Life

No time to say goodbye

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Yet you do not know what tomorrow will bring. What is your life? For you are a mist that appears for a little time and then vanishes. Ephesians 1:10

It’s a snapshot in my mind that will never go away…….a pickup driving by, a friendly average, innocent wave, nothing more. He was the guy, a friend of a mutual friend, who did some work on my brother’s rental house. For one holiday we parked the Motorhome there in the driveway. We talked and visited, and he volunteered to put our new vents on the roof, since neither one of us was eager to climb up there. So he did it, and he and Elaine talked and visited, and she volunteered to pay him, and he refused. Finally he accepted money for lunch.

He smiled and waved from his truck later that day.

Shortly after we got back to Arizona the phone rang and it was my Mom telling me that he had taken his life. Our friend went to pick him up for church and he found him. And last night we got another call, another person, also a Dad, reached the unthinkable place where it seemed the only option. Elaine and I talked to him on the porch for 20 minutes or so on Halloween night when he brought his young son Trick-or-treating.

And all I keep thinking about, praying about, are the kids, the wife, the people left behind. And I also keep thinking that we are all so breakable. We can only take so much.

I couldn’t really pray this morning, I just went out by the river and listened until the sounds of humanity started to intersect with the sounds of nature as God intended. I listened hard for any answers when I first went out, and all I heard was the owl. I heard the “Whoooo-whoo-whooing”……I thought I heard it repeat “Why……” instead.

Seemed the only think we could do this morning was head out on the river to see if it had any answers. It didn’t. But there’s something about being on the water that stills the soul. Seeing trees and clouds upside down changes your perspective. We paddled slow, meandered, both of us lost in thought.

The harsh reality is that there is no guarantee in this life that we will get a chance to say goodbye. I know that more than most. Another reality is that try as you might, some people, some situations just aren’t fixable. Not in this lifetime anyway. Life is short, we say. But why don’t we live as though we really believe it is? We waste so much time on anger, worry, little irritations that won’t matter a hill of beans in eternity.

Behold, you have made my days a few handbreadth, and my lifetime is as nothing before you. Surely all mankind stands as a mere breath! Selah Surely a man goes about as a shadow! Surely for nothing they are in turmoil; man heaps up wealth and does not know who will gather! Psalm 39:5,6

I need to get dressed……the day is already slipping away. Looking up, I see the bright red stickers that Mike left on our vents before he installed them, and I never want to take them off. I don’t want to forget his life. Because his life mattered to God and to his family. He left an indelible snapshot in my mind and now I have another, of someone else I exchanged words with however briefly. My Mom tells me that he was the only neighbor to ask how she was when she was sick, to tell her how happy he was that she was outside again.

And yes, you can say the most selfish thing in the world you can do is take your own life and I believe that. But I also believe that like the sticker says, we are not “guaranteed unbreakable.” Even God Himself had to be breakable for a time. Shortly before the cross He said, “This is my body, broken for you……..” Thankfully, the difference was and is, He had the power to put Himself back together which allows Him able to put us back together as well.

Please join me in praying for this dear family who is broken right now beyond my imagination.

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Leaving a legacy………..

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This was on our Intel news memorial page today: I didn’t know this gentleman but judging by the many kind comments, he was much-loved. What a wonderful legacy of kindness and character he left. This is what matters after we’re gone…………what kind of a legacy do you want to leave your family? Your friends?  Your community?

Jingyoo Choi was a loving and devoted husband and father. He enjoyed playing golf during his free time. He was a fighter when it came to playing golf. He beat one Intel friend seven straight times but always remembered to cheer his friend up after the game was over. Just last Monday he told this same friend that even with his illness and body condition, he would keep fighting. He never complained through all of his treatments and remained ever optimistic for the future.

He loved traveling the world with his family during his vacations. He had a beautiful voice and sang in the church choir. It was in the church choir in Korea that he met his future wife, Kim. On Sundays he could be heard down the church hallways during choir practice. He was a true friend to all who knew him, and he always had a smile.

After we’re gone the only thing we really leave is our legacy. What kind do we want to leave? What kind of living legacy are we sowing seeds for in the future right now? How would your family change if you weren’t there?
 
I don’t want people to be relieved when I’m gone.
 
We will all leave many things behind, but the things we try so hard to get like money, fame, beauty, recognition won’t matter. It’s the life and laughter we leave behind that will. It’s the time you spent with those you love, the things you did together; things that might have seemed small and everyday at the time, but added up, the effect on a life is monumental.
 
And the thing is, you can only borrow on someone else’s legacy so long, ultimately you have to build your own.
 
So, will you vanish like a vapor, leaving those around you untouched? Will you slip unnoticed through an opening in the hedge, only to have to close right over as if you were never there?
 
Or will there be a glaring absence……a tear in the universe where you once stood? At least to those who loved you and whom you loved in return.
 
Will they say things like:
 
She had the best laugh……..I could always count on her to help…….he was the kindest person I ever knew……she always took time for me…….he didn’t talk at me, he talked to me……she always made me feel important……she opened my eyes to the beauty around me………She took me camping……..he taught me about God.
 
This is what I think……the most powerful legacies left behind will be those who will inspire you to improve even long after they are gone. And the best thing is, it’s never too late to improve while we are still living and breathing.
 

Evening Falls……

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I sit, long after I should. Everything is set aright, lamps off, doors locked, and I can feel the morning pressing in, even though it’s still across the world. It is creeping up, as it is past nine. The alarm will go off at 4….just 7 little hours away.

Still, something keeps me up. Maybe its the way the party lights shimmer against the window, their color the only thing alive here in the quiet night. They seem to whisper a promise of parties come and parties gone and parties yet to be. Pinterest calls me but I tagged teamed that already, and Facebook as well. The cats are even settled in their nightly places, their eyes know things that daylight doesn’t quite understand.

Times like these make me savor the last shreds of what’s left of the day. I contemplate what it means to be here now, alive, breathing listening for every night noise. It’s an amazing thing to know God’s up there seeing everything at once. Seeing the orphan in Haiti, the tears of a mother in Africa who can’t feed her child, the praying minister deep in the silent halls of a church in China, and the over-indulged and the overworked and starving here too.

I fight sleep and I don’t know why. I guess because I am trying to hear the world like God does. I hear….yes, but only when it’s quiet.

Psalm 139 and 3/4

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“I press on toward the goal to win the prize for which God has called me heavenward in Christ Jesus.”

He has indeed called us Heavenward. And even as we battle down here we are thinking of that hereafter, that future time where the cares of this world are but a lost memory.

And as I lay awake in the dark tallying up my worries, thinking about all the things I wish I could fix but can’t, I write my own Psalm and call it 139 and three-quarters.

For the umpteenth time, I give Him my laundry list of things, those that He already knows about me and I feel it float Heavenward as He assures me He loves me anyway, again.

When sleep is snatched away by the cares of this world, I pray in the wide awake moments before dawn and I feel the peace of my home surrounding me like a cloak. Though worldly sorrow nips at the edges of my heart, the hope of His peace seeps in and around it like Holy smoke. This is the prayer I pray: 

“Bind us together Lord, bind us together with cords that cannot be broken.”

And then I think of the sock that made its way into my suitcase. Her little sock.

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I don’t know how it got there, but I am glad it came back with me.

I think of all the pictures I didn’t take, and how my camera never left its bag. And how I couldn’t care less because what we had instead was much more beautiful.

I thought of how we hid every possible place in the house and how she covered her eyes and counted and giggled as we crouched together in the dark closet while my Dad looked for us. She still hasn’t got the part where she is supposed to stay quiet while she hides, and that makes it all the more precious somehow.

Years from now, I will remember how we all collapsed on the couch after we were done, and how Mom came in and asked what we had all been doing to look so exhausted.

I thought of how I put swim goggles on along with my wrinkles and flat hair and went all the way under the water because she wanted to see me under there with her. I can still hear her shriek of excitement, “You too, Nori!”

It was also a weekend of some firsts. She sat down beside me on the couch with a book and let me read to her, something I have dreamed of ever since she was born. It was like a mini miracle. And how she wedged herself into the couch close by me, wanting to be right by my side all weekend long.

We went to the store together and she helped me shop. Another first. Store was always a scary place for her before.

No, I didn’t get one photograph of fall, not one red leaf, not one landscape of how the morning mist lay in the vineyards, and not the one of the old barn I saw either. Sometimes life just can’t be freeze framed, it has to be lived. The leaf you see is one I took a year or so ago.

This was not the time to chase the perfect shot. It was the time to savor, and treasure, and corral that which there is never enough of.

Time.

That’s what the sock reminded me of.

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And looking at it now, I’m smiling as big as the face on the sock because when I look at it, I can still hear “You too, Nori!”

Sometimes, Heaven’s a place you can find here. It’s in the love shining out from the eyes you leave and come home too.

God’s way of saying He loves us.

Feeling a bit like Jesus

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Yesterday, I felt a little bit like Jesus must have felt.  I felt an ache for humanity. I’m not sure why I feel this way some days more than others. I think it must be because I am watching someone slip away and it’s not pretty. It’s not slipping away quietly, it’s more like hanging on for dear life. I have never watched something like that before.

Lately every time I turn around, something else stands as a reminder of how quickly this life is passing by. A memorial service on Saturday……and then this week, my Mom lost two more friends. My brother said when he heard, “Well, now he can see his son Royce again.” I had forgotten that his son had passed away at 16, the same age as my brother was. So many years ago now.

As I went about my day yesterday, I somehow felt people instead of just seeing them.  

At the car wash, I saw a man checking the trash cans. When he caught my eye, he looked a little sheepish and I looked down, embarrassed for him, saddened. I wondered what led him to this point. When he passed me, he gave me a smile and said, “How many people look at your car and yell Slugbug?” I said, “Many…..” and gave him a smile. There was so much more I wanted to say.

That’s one of the reasons I want to keep my car.

And then I had a wild urge to ask the person next to me pumping gas if he knew Jesus. So what if he thinks I’m crazy?

Maybe being a little bit crazy and saying something is more sane than knowing people are going to hell all around me and acting like it’s no big deal.

My Grandpa used to go up to strangers and ask that all the time. He died when I was 2. Oh how I long to meet him in Heaven. I hope he will be one of the first I see.

At the store I saw a really, really big lady in one of those ride-around carts. I am not happy to say my first thought was tinged with judgment. Then I said a silent prayer of forgiveness and gave her a smile. I have a feeling maybe she doesn’t get many. She gave me a beautiful smile back. My heart panged.

And my heart kept panging all the way home. And I finally cried because of what we are going through right now with Elaine’s Dad. I hadn’t until then.

The truth is, none of us knows when God will call us to hang up our hat for good on this earth,  but what I do know is that this life lasts about as long as a daffodil, here today and gone tomorrow, and hopefully with Him.

Let us treasure what we have.

Let us treasure who we have.

Let us bring Heaven to earth by putting aside all our disagreements and hurts, our disappointments and failures to love each other well aside.

Because it’s all just too short.

“I, even I, am he who comforts you.
    Who are you that you fear mere mortals,
    human beings who are but grass,

Isaiah 51:12

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