If you only had one month to live?
That’s the question that is asked in the book by Kerry and Chris Shook, One Month to Live: 30 Days to a No-Regrets Life. Find our more about it here.
When I first introduced the book to my Sr. Pastor for possible inclusion to kick start our 2011 year, I kinda thought he would say no. I had read this book a few years ago and something told me to pick it up over the summer. I’ve told various pastor friends about it in hopes that they too would challenge their congregations with book. I’m excited that my pastor said YES! Starting Jan 2011 we will be speaking about this book via sermons and in our new small group communities on Weds. I’m re-reading it right now to refresh my mind but for my readers here are the four main principles of the book:
a. Live Passionately
b. Love Completely
c. Learn Humbly
d. Leave Boldly
What made me first pick up this book and devour it was how the author starts off the book sharing how we have to think about how we are living our life within the dash -. You know the dash in-between your birth and your upcoming death. Most of us go through life in slow motion or as a race car driver, never really considering if our life is making a difference to the ones around us. Now that we are entering the new year, most of us will be thinking about how we will live our life differently in 2011. I say we consider living it passionately. Doing what we love, cutting off the voices around us that want to box us in into a person we really aren’t, finally exercising our voices and not making apologies for the great creations that we are (given that you are that is of course). Ah, we need to also consider how we can love completely. This is tricky because everyone thinks (especially those who actually take the time to reflect) that they are loving completely but I have to say from my own personal experience and as a leader in the church that we ALWAYS need help in this area. Most of us love conditionally and let us not step on each other’s toes or we are off the list, yeap DEFRIENDED for real. Most of us don’t even know how to be friends. I am still learning but what helped me was my friendships with three very different women. Women who challenged my thinking, made me cry when they told me the truth about myself I didn’t want to see, celebrated me when great things were happening in my life and pushed the envelope in hot topic discussions over dinner when I didn’t want to hear their opinion. In the past I would just cut people off but over the last 10 years God truly changed me. I am still living and learning how to love completely. We should all be on that journey.
Learning humbly is yet another area where I have found that many just don’t get it. I have a doctorate and I know I don’t know everything. If I did I would be a millionaire right? But haven’t you meant those people who have that aura and persona that they know everything, they are always right and God forbid you tell them they are wrong! As Christians it makes my stomach turn the way 1) most people don’t want to learn and 2) how many think they don’t need to learn because as I said, they know everything already. I’m not just talking head knowledge about things that don’t matter either. I’m talking about learning about yourself, learning how to avoid “identity theft” because too many of us forget who’s kid we are, whose our daddy and thus go through life wearing a mask, being a bit of everyone else instead of 100% us. You know what I mean? When we can finally admit to ourselves (its not about others) that we don’t know everything and that figuring who God wants us to be is a full-time job, we take the burden off ourselves to be who others want us to be. You actually get to a place where you just don’t care what others say. Yes, you watch your reputation but you don’t let other people’s opinion of you or society rules dedicate who you will be. That my dear friends, only comes when we dare to learn humbly.
Finally, the last principle is Leave Boldly. This my friends is about legacy. Most of us like I said before, just go through life. We don’t sit and reflect about the legacy we are leaving behind. Much less, the investment needed to leave a good one. One of the questions in the book related to this principle is “for what would you like to be remembered?” So here’s what I would say at 12:56 AM on 12/24/10:
a. I want to be remembered as a person that was true to herself (real) not because it was the latest buzz but because its only in being true to me that I can discern the voice of God in me trying to press through all the other voices
b. I want to be remembered as a person who cared for her peeps not because its a job (as a pastor) but because I truly am in awe that God would give me the opportunity to shepherd people and guide them in some form or manner in the greatest journey there is ….life
c. I want to be remembered as a generous person not a money thing per se but that I wasn’t cheap when I had the means to give…whether it was time, talent or treasure. I want the world to be able to say she was spent…on the things of God.
d. I want to be remembered as a good mom because at the end of the day this to me is my most important role and part of the legacy I leave to the world. My children.
e. I want to be remembered as an inspirational woman not because I want fame (or fortune) but because when I thought I couldn’t make it anymore, when life really sucker punched me in the stomach, there was a sister there to inspire me. We need each other to survive. We can fake it but truly God wants us to look to each other to pick each other up, to cheer one another one and to once in one slap a sister upside her head when she is heading in the wrong direction. Everything I’ve been doing through CEFL and its magazine SOAR and even in my church through the women’s ministry is because I want to inspire women.
So there you have it, I don’t think I have to wait till I hear those words…you have 30 days to live. I think I can start living that way now. I don’t even have to wait till Jan 2011. I ask you to think about this for yourself. What would you do…
