As I sit in a performing arts theater of people with a one-year-old pressed heavily against my chest, the tears start to trickle, then flow steadily and freely. It’s like every emotion that has been floating around picked this moment in a crowd of people to escape.
What am I doing here?
These girls that I love, the ones dancing…they have people missing from the audience, from their lives. One dad who suddenly left earth too soon. One childhood friend who was at school with her then gone the next.
The child on my lap and the one sitting next to me with parents who can’t be present in their lives, who have hurt them…they are mine to love.
Why am I here?
The one-year-old looks up at me and then around. I try to stop my tears because I don’t know what they will mean to his little soul who suddenly became encased in mine. His tiny finger traces my tears. Then he takes that same finger with my tears and puts it to his own eye. I’m not sure what this means, but he’s sincere.
What will I do with this one wild and precious life?
James 1:27 says, “Religion that God our Father accepts as pure and faultless is this: to look after orphans and widows in their distress and to keep oneself from being polluted by the world.”
I almost chose to walk away. From the pain. From life. From the people. I just couldn’t carry all of these burdens and anxieties and grief anymore. I’ve been helping the widows. I’ve been loving the children. But yet, I still doubted my purpose in this world. I still questioned my worthiness to live. I was going to trust my pain instead of trusting my SAVIOR.
What will I do with this one wild and precious life?
I think I’ll just live it one day at time, trusting the ONE who holds tomorrow in his hands.
I have no idea what the future holds for me in any aspect of my life, except that I want to chose to follow God’s path and LOVE. Because love will win every time. God’s ultimate love for us won eternity FOR US. I think I’ll take that one life I was given and live and love fully.
So be it if I cry in an auditorium of people. I feel. I feel everything. Sometimes all at once. I’m a very feeling person in a very reckless world. But I am more and more ready each day to live that ONE wild and precious life.
What will you do with yours?
-Anonymous
Thank you to the anonymous Hope419 patient who shared her vulnerability so that others may know they are not alone in their times of desperation.