Too Short

I couldn’t blog at the end of last week. I didn’t know what to say. On Monday, we lost a friend. My husband’s longest friend, to be exact. Mike knew Mark since birth. Mark was the best man in our wedding. He was quiet and soft-spoken, a good friend, a hard worker, and had a great smile. When I picture him in my mind, he is standing with his hands in his pockets, smiling, and saying, “well…”

He was 38. His life was taken by a fast-growing brain tumor.

I hate cancer.

We are sad. We are grieving. As we drove to the graveside service, we drove past Mike’s grandparent’s graves, where his mom’s ashes were sprinkled five and a half years ago.

Life is too short.

As I talked to Anne on Saturday evening, I reminded her that we never know what tomorrow holds, so we need to make sure we are living in right relationship with Christ and with others. I told her that we need to make sure that we are always telling those we love that we love them, even if it feels like we say it all the time.

Because life is too short.

Life is too short to get mixed up in drama. Life is too short to hold grudges. Life is too short to throw it away on some mid-life crisis. Life is too short to give up on your wife, husband, kids, or friends. Life is too short to spend it wishing that something was different. Life is too short to spend it holed up on your couch in front of the TV instead of with the people who you love. Life is too short to spend it obsessed with making a dollar instead of building relationships.

Life is too short.

In John 10:10b Jesus says, “I have come that they may have life, and have it to the full.”

I want to have that life. I want to make sure that I am living in a way that is pleasing to my Father in Heaven, and that means living for Him, and loving those around me – family, friends, neighbors, enemies.

Because life is too short to live any other way.