Hold On For Life

I’m thinking about my friend, Torrey, today.  It is coming up on two years since she passed away, and I am convicted about the way I have been viewing my life of late, because I know she would be living life to the hilt if she were here, and she would tell me I am focusing on the wrong things.  She would be right, of course, and whenever I think of her, I am reminded to take a look at my own journey to see where it compares to the example she set for me in the most brutal of times in her life...I am not pleased with the results of this current comparison...

 We have made tentative plans to have a garage sale.  I say tentative plans, because we cannot all seem to agree on the weekend to get it done.  I am persevering though.  There is this very great sense of empowerment that occurs when I am tossing out the old to make more space for what is really valued.  How is it that I cannot do the same with my internal processes, my life? 

I believe in icons; not idols;  icons.  To my mind, an icon is a marker that personifies something too large to define.  My friend has become an icon to me, reminding me of the way I should live life.  When I think of her I am reminded that I have a responsibility to get up every day and be thankful that I have the option to kiss my husband passionately, laugh with my stepsons, talk with my family, love on my animals, and look forward to the human experience that is detailed by the senses.  

I cannot honestly say that I have been doing such, that I even have much energy to want to do such.  But my icon reminds me to continue trying.   So, as I am sitting here, forcing fragmented thought into order, I am reminded of how blessed I am.  I am reminded that my life is a story, and the best of stories do not unfold in a straight line to the horizon.  The best of stories twist and turn.  They encounter low dark places and highs with air and light.  If I am going to be here; if I am going to have a story, I want it to be among the best of stories.  I cannot continually look back and wonder what would be had I taken a different turn or done something else.  I cannot continue to posit the future, striving toward it while becoming further discontented with my present.  I must commit to walking through each and every moment as fully committed to it as possible, my energies invested in right now.

Do you see a theme in my blogs of late?  Stepping over the carcass of the past, not trying to leap into the thin air of the future while creating what it should be, but choosing to live in the present.  Many can identify that living in the now is more of a challenge than it seems, but once again I am committing to doing just that.  I am having an emotional garage sale, and I am throwing out the past, the foggy future, and all that I have been lamenting because what I think should be is not the same as what actually is.  

I may be in a period of mental discord, as my mind struggles to get my uninvited guest back in its parameters, but that is no excuse to give up on what I know to be the truth of my life.  I don’t know what that is for you, but for me is a promise Abba gave me.  And while I don’t know why my friend had to go away at such a young age, I do know where she is and that she would applaud the truth I have found for my life while admonishing me to narrow the gap between what I believe an what I am living.

The following has been running through my mind today in fragments.  I looked up the lyrics, and now I understand why it has been playing on my internal record player.  I will hold on.

Hold on to Jesus

Steven Curtis Chapman

I have come to this ocean
And the waves of fear are starting to grow
The doubts and questions are rising with the tide
So I'm clinging to the one sure thing I know

I will hold on to the hand of my Savior
And I will hold on with all my might
I will hold loosely to things that are fleeting
And hold on to Jesus
I will hold on to Jesus for life

I've tried to hold many treasures
They just keep slipping through my fingers like sand
But there's one treasure that means more than breath itself
So I'm clinging to it with everything I am

Like a child holding on to a promise
I will cling to His word and believe
As I press on to take hold of that
For which Christ Jesus took hold of me

Hold on for life