No Guarantees.

I called my Dad tonight. At midnight. He was up. He picked up and I started to cry when I said, “Dad, I just wanted to call and tell you that I love you.”

Once again, I am reminded of life’s fragility. We aren’t guaranteed tomorrow. I don’t know why some of us will be called home before most would say is a full life. But seriously, what is the measure of a full life anyways? It certainly isn’t how long you live. It’s how you live and the lives you touch and change. It’s what you do to make a difference in this life for however long you will be around.

When you lose those people who become influences in your life, you realize even more how much they change you, how much they challenge you as a person. What are we living for here? Is it just to carry on our everyday lives, a monotonous habitual routine? I don’t think so. We are here to make a difference, even if we don’t know how or why or in what way we will. We look for the callings in our life. Some call it fate, others call it God’s will, and others say we choose our path. Whatever one calls it, it is all a journey. Life is a journey, a series of events that I like to call opportunities. It’s all in how you respond to those opportunities, rather than react to them. Your responses make you who you are and mold you into who you will become. I choose to live learning who I am whilst knowing whose I am. This is my inner being and the journey into the purpose of my life.

While we weep for those lost influences, we find comfort in them too. They become even more opportunities to grow from, change, and then use. We find ourselves challenged to our very cores, selflessness that challenges our human selfish nature. How does that work? Simply, you don’t change the world being selfish.

How can we take the power of this influence and make a difference in this world? That’s part of the journey. It’s amazing how even one person can set an example that can affect thousands of people and they not even realize it. It’s a matter of passing the influence, a kind of paying it forwards essentially.

During my first ever missions trip to Honduras, I realized that my purpose was to affect people in a positive way. I wasn’t sure how I was going to do it. My first baby steps included making the children smile around me. In all reality, they were influencing me more than I was influencing them. I didn’t understand it at the time. I was still in my selfish bubble trying to do things all myself. Honestly, that never was in my control anyways. It never has been.

Divine connections. Oh how I never understood the term. Even the smallest decisions along our paths take us places and bring us to meet people we never would’ve before. One small instance in time can change the entire course of your life! Once I realized how these divine connections worked, I noticed them more and more in my life and was able to see the opportunities in front of me. How I responded to those opportunities has molded me into who I am today. Those opportunities not only included events in my life, but meeting the people who would influence it as well.

Now I find myself, once again, pondering where I’m at in my life. I don’t just want to “live” my life, I want to live! We aren’t guaranteed tomorrow. The sense of urgency is upon us all. It’s not a doomsday urgency, even though I do know that that will come like a thief in the night. However, I choose not to live my life in fear. Fear only weakens us. If we dwell on it, we will never become the influence that is intended for our lives. I choose to take a hold of it and conquer it, thus I become stronger and move towards who I am supposed to become in this life.

I’m not here without purpose. I was created on purpose. When I move one step closer to the intended fulfillment of my true purpose, I know it. I can feel it. I can’t call it satisfaction though. Satisfaction implies completion and I won’t be satisfied until I am gone from this Earth. You see, ultimately this place will never “satisfy” my true and inner being. How can it? We live in a world full of selfish influence and to really make a difference, as I’ve stated before, you can’t be selfish. Yes, you can grow yourself, but growing yourself is a benefit to others. You can change lives just through that.

I pray daily that I can become a fraction of the influence that the people who change and grow me are in my life. They are the ones who have helped me along this journey thus far. Even though I do not know how long I will be here and I stand at the mere beginning of my own voyage, I keep my eyes focused on that ultimate goal. Who I am is a gift given to me, and who I become is a gift that I can give.