Done Living

Two Sundays ago at church really struck something inside of me. Justin McRoberts was a guest speaker (if you don't know he is a Christian music artist). His main message was to introduce Compassion International, a Christian charitable organization that sponsors children in impoverished nations. As part of his message he sang a few of his songs, one in particular stood out more than the others. It was titled 'Done Living'. The chorus of the song goes like this:

"You see the question isn't are you going to suffer any more, but what will it have meant when you are through? The question isn’t are you going to die, you’re going to die, but will you be done living when you do?”

The question really hit me; if I died tomorrow, would I be done living? Would people look back at my life and say that it was full, that it was not a wasted life. When I evaluate that question myself, I can't say that it would be. I have changed and grown so much over the past year and a half that it still continues to amaze me. Yet when I really sit down and dig deep and ask myself, 'am I living the full life, a life full of God, full of love, full of selflessness, full of joy; am I full?', I would not be able to say yes. There are definitely moments in my life where I live this out, but as a whole, I am not there. It's not so much a somber thought as it is an eye opening one. Where is my life right now, and where is it going? Why am I not living out life as it was meant to be? It's amazing how we as people tend to forget what God has brought us through and where He has brought us from, and focus on the insignificant current frustrations of life of the present.

I leave in two weeks to spend six days in the mountains at a high school camp, where my job is to portray the love of Christ to kids who have never known it, and to show them that the full life is the only life worth living.

I came into this world full of life, full of hope, full of dreams.

And slowly over the years I allowed the world to strip me of these things.

Every step taken, every success made, every worldly gain,

Brought me no more closer to joy or peace or rest, but instead diseased me with pain.

And when I could no longer contain inside myself all the anger, hurt, fear and doubt; when I no longer had the strength to cope,

God ripped it out of me, every last bit, till I thought I was dead and was left with no hope.

But in that place and through those times, the conclusion that I drew,

Is that He loves me more than I could imagine, and that He really does make all things new.

And I will continue to fight to hold on, to embrace God as my life, my hopes and my dreams, to continue to grow from that deep planted seed.

For I was created to be a light, an encouragement, a reflection, a friend; and when I get to the end I will say it with a smile, I have lived the full life, I am done living indeed.

Year 25 in reflection

Two days until I will have spent 26 years on this earth. I suppose the thing to do is reflect on this past year. I have to say it's been an amazing adventure. It started off with me in summer school after about four years of not taking classes. (Wow, that's a long time!) I was a year into working real estate at a condominium sales project in Fremont. I learned alot working in a business atmosphere, but mostly that I hated sales and business. After swearing off school for four years I decided to go back and do nursing. I quit my job, signed up for anatomy and started working at The Bridges as a server. And the craziest thing happened. I loved school. I had so much fun that summer, spending five days a week five hours a day in class, practice labs on the weekends, and studying for hours and hours during the week. I soaked up every bit of it and became more and more excited about school. After five weeks of intense anatomy, school got out and within days I was off to YL camp. A few days before camp I was told I would be a leader for a bunch of kids from Livermore (whom I had never met). I was a little nervous to be sure, but I went with it. The bus ride up was a little awckward but by the end of the first day at camp I had made some amazing connections with my small group and the other guys in my cabin. That week turned out to be a huge encouragement in my life. Its like part of me had been dead for years, a result of letting life beat me up, but I became fully alive then and there. Something in me switched on and I have never been the same since. That was one of the best summers of my life.

The school year went on and I continued to love it, make new friends, and push on through. An opportunity came up in January to go to Colorado--I was in and it was amazing! That trip set in me an undeniable desire to do a missions trip (I had never done anything like it before). A month or so later I learned about a trip to Hungary, and my life will never be the same because of it (seems like thats a constant theme in my life).

So here I am, two days away from my birthday, two and half weeks away from YL camp, and three and half weeks away from travelling the US by car with three good buddies. I have allowed my life to become more of an adventure and now I'm addicted. I have new dreams and desires and get excited every day about what's to come.

Everyone has those things in their life that makes their heart come alive, and I have begun to find what those things are for me. I used to think it was in physical adventure, pushing myself past boundaries and limits, hanging off cliffs, falling out of the skies; but those things never satisfied. It's when I'm around people that I come alive, it's when I get the opportunity to be who I am in situations I've never been in. The adventure is not what you're doing, its who you're doing it with. And so I get ready to begin another year of life, with no clue of where it's going to take me.