Anywhere But Here

Some circumstances just stand out in life.  Like signposts punched into the crossroads of days, they mark places we don't forget.

One of the markers in my life came from my sweet stepmother Maggie.  While my father suffered from Alzheimer's, getting progressively sicker and more difficult and unpredictable, she served him patiently and with almost seamless love.  It cost her, and she grew thin from it, but somehow, the weariness rarely showed on her face.  She smiled and comforted with hardly any visible personal distress.

One day, when I asked her how she was doing, she took my hands, looked me in the eye, and said, "I don't ever want to be anywhere but here."  Years later, I still find that absolutely amazing. It seems like I spend so much of every day's space thinking about somewhere else.

I confess impatience with life.  It's not just that life brings trouble.  It's that life is so often so darned, well, ordinary.  And I am willing to do the mundane, but in the process, I sure expect something significant and enlarging and ALIVE.  But life doesn't work that way.

When the woman saw that the fruit was good for food and pleasing to the eye and desirable for gaining wisdom, she took some and ate it.--Genesis 3:6

Eve had the same problem as I do.

I constantly look here and there for something better than what I have, thinking that life is bigger than what lies right at my feet. But God has already shown me the path of life. He says so.


These are the days of my life.  Right here.  Right now.  Just as they unfold, the beautiful and the mundane.  If I don't live them, waiting for something different,  I will not only miss the grand and lofty, I will miss everything.

These days, every one of them, are gifts from God.  I need to live them, expecting beauty not because of what the days bring, but because of who God is.  The wonder of days, after all, does not come from their own unfolding hours; it comes through God's ordination.  

Days have beauty simply by virtue of their creation by God. That is why I rejoice and am glad in them.

I have come so that they may have LIFE and have it to the full.--John 10:10 (my emphasis)

I do not ever have to wait one more minute for life to begin.  It races by second upon second.  I spend it as I talk or write or love.  I also spend it while I grumble or argue or look around somewhere else.  Life is my Lord's wonderful gift, unwrapping itself with each breath.

Breathe in, breathe out.  Live. Now.