I’m not perfect…profound, I know.

We all have some bumps and bruises, baggage and unmentionable events that happened in the past.  If you say you don’t, you’re full of crap.   As soon as a new car is taken off the lot it immediately loses value.  As soon as we’re born we begin to age, never to be new again.  I’m not sure there is such a thing as a perfect person or a perfect car for that matter.

But we can dream right?  I certainly do.   I dream that I’m doing the right things, choosing the right life and making the right decisions.  Somewhere along the way I detour.  I trip, stumble, and usually fall down.  Do I get beat up along the way…hell yeah!    But I think the strongest essence of our character is how we deal with the things that have happened to us. 

Do we drive around proud of the dents in our fenders, proud of the life lessons we have learned or do we do all we can to pretend they never happened?   Trust me when I say that I’m not perfect, oh wait, I already said that.  Ok, so what I mean is, I’m proud of some of my bumps and bruises.  As I get older, it gets easier to admit to some of them but there are some that are still hiding in the truck under the spare tire – but I’ve learned from them too.

How proud are you of your dents?  Do you wear them proudly or do you hide them somewhere?

And in the end, it’s not the years in your life that count. It’s the life in your years. ~ Abraham Lincoln

There is a Garth Brooks song called “Pushing Up Daisies” that has stuck with me ever since I heard it years ago.  An excerpt:

There’s two dates in time
That they’ll carve on your stone
And everyone knows what they mean
What’s more important
Is the time that is known
In that little dash there in between
That little dash there in between

Are you living in the dash? 

My church is starting a series of services centered around the idea of living as you only had one month to live. Would you change how you lived your life for the next month if you knew it would be your last one? 

They call it a challenge. 

What would you do differently if you only had thirty days??  Go ahead, think about it for a minute.  (I’ll wait here)

It’s hard to say isn’t it?   It was a lot easier for me to say what I would not do than how I would do something different. I know I would spend as much time as I could with my family. 

The point of the “challenge” isn’t to plan out how you would spend the last thirty days of your life – as if you would even know when that was.  The point is to get you to start thinking about living your life differently now not waiting until you know you have a short time left to do the things you always wanted to do.  

The “challenge” I am struggling with is not what I would do – its how to go about doing it and not get sucked back in to the daily grind we have become accustomed to. 

I want to travel the US in an RV – see places and experience different people and take lots of photos.  I was to live life, travel, love and be loved, and ultimately be happy.  If in the process, I could make a difference in someone else’s life – that’s a bonus.

Do you know how I could start living my dreams now?  That will be my journey…I just don’t want to spend my life trying to figure it out. 

I leave you with a quote from www.onemonthtolive.com :

“Wouldn’t it be wonderful to live your life so that if you discovered you only had a month to live, you wouldn’t have to change a thing?”

Leave your dreams in the comments below. 

Have you ever watched the second hand on the clock?  It just keeps on going, a little at a time.  It doesn’t stop.  It doesn’t care how much we wish a moment would last forever or how at the end of a work day we wish it would tick a little faster.   Like a good little soldier…time keeps marching on.

Our lifes are made up of moments in time, the things we do with each tick, every second of every day.  

My resolution for the new year is to make the most of each moment that I have left.   With every year I hope it will be better than the last.  As I get older, I also realize that I’m not sure how much life I have left to live.  

I was given one of the most profound gifts I have ever received in my life this last year.  I was taught that life is more than the things we have, rather it is about the things we do, the people we touch, and the memories we make. 

Hester Purefinder is a character created by my late Aunt, Colleen Gilbert.  An 18th Century Reenactor, a beggar woman with a heart of gold.   She was a prankster and jester, soiled with dirt from head to toe – people would look for her with anticipation at an event.   

In July, my Aunt passed away from a brain aneurysm at the young age of 53.  It was unexpected and probably unpredictable.   What wasn’t expected was the outpouring of love and admiration from people with whom she had made an impact on their lives.   The love people have for her is unexplainable.  She will be remembered always.

Her passing also made an impact on our family.  First, we never knew how little she had.  Having no children of her own, her immediate family was me, my brothers, my parents and my grandmother.   We were tasked with finalizing her “estate” which included a single wide trailer and everything in it.  Never do I want my family to have to sort through my material things.  It felt as much as an invasion as it did a chore. 

Second, she taught us that love survives death.  She kept relatively quiet to our family.  She shared the fun she had at reenactments and the amazing people she would meet.   We had no idea how touched others were by her presence.   She died on a day when she was meant to be going on a road trip with a few of her friends to the next event.   Word spread quickly that something was wrong.   And just as quickly, a message board filled up with worry, prayers, stories, and tears. 

She didn’t know when she was going to die.  Not many of us are given that opportunity, but by grace, her life meant something to many people who now carry her spirit with them wherever they go.  

As time keeps moving, the clock is still ticking on the wall, I pray that I can live up to a fraction of what my aunt did.   I pray that I can have an impact on people, to change their life for the better, to be loved and love others, and to be remembered for the joy I brought to their life.