What's Important...

I apologize to anyone whose been following this blog from the get-go and may feel a little frustrating de-ja-vu from what I'm about to say. At this point, you must realize...
A) chemo-brain is REAL, as I'm experiencing now. :-P and B) How much can one Chatty-Cathy ramble  before coming full circle with words, anyway?!

Whatever the case, even I feel a bit like a dog chasing it's tail in my 'ah-ha' moments these days. This journey has me living with my flesh in a way I've never had to before--revealing my ridiculous tendency to 'get something', be inspired and speak it--only then to have to smack that same wall again three days later. Let's face it...

WE ARE SO DUMB.

I found it rather ironic the other night when our almost-four-year-old--in response to his daddy speaking of an example of others not being so smart--blurted out 'WE aren't smart!'
Firstly, thank you, little son--(and God for using our little son)--for keeping us humble.
Secondly, IT'S. TRUE.
I find myself wanting less and less to do with this life's body. Not only did it get cancer and inherit a bunch of ugly scars--and that's after it was already 'reminding' me with bits of cellulite and saggy-ness that I'm in my early thirties, now--but, even the two main organs imperative for our average 75-year survival, are incredibly defective!
Our brains give our flesh and the evil of this world faaaaar too much power and control and our hearts can so easily be deceived and/or deceivING, also. If you disagree, just read Jeremiah 17:9 and then go read the many examples in the bible of the heart being led by jealousy and fierce evil to do malicious things. I don't know about you...but I can't wait to not be constantly battling with myself!!! :-P


So...now that I'm 200 yards left-field from where I'd started with this--(thank you, chemo-brain + my formerly rambling-tendencied self)--back to what I was saying about learning lessons over and over.

Many of you have told me over the course of this past seven months that you have learned so much from my journey, to which I simply have to say, 'I agree!'--for me I mean. ;) God really is doing a work in me through all this and right now, it's all about teaching me what's important and what is not.

I know, I know... it's not profound....... in fact it's been spoken at least a thousand times at inspirational conferences and written a thousand more in 'living life to the fullest' books...yet, I personally have to argue that it is a veeeery profound realization, for me.
Why? I honestly can't tell you except to say that nothing has ever been more clear....or joy-filling. :)

Of what am I speaking, you beg??

RELATIONSHIPS.
Yep.

Look around you at what you have.

-You probably have a house. Many of you pay the owner of said house to live there, while some of you actually pay a bank so you can someday call that house your straight-across own. (I've always laughed at the term 'home-owner' when a mortgage-payment technically means you are a home-OWER.) :-P
*Anyway, off-track again.*

-Most of you also have a car--many of which that is actually a debt, too.

-Most of you have clothes and shoes and all sorts of unnecessary but 'fun' accessories to go with.

-Most of you have food in your fridge and cupboards.

These things are what we proud, selfish and rather clueless Americans call 'the basics.'

Then... some of you even have 'the extras.' Big-people toys, as I call them. ;)
Boats, trailers, ATV's...things that add fun/entertainment to your lives...not to mention cost you more money...but entertainment in most forms, for many of us, far outweighs the 'worth' of that money. (hmmm, that's one you could really sit and ponder the flesh's deceit in, eh?)

So what, of any of these things, is important???

Well, to most... the 'basics' are an absolute necessity for living day-to-day... and I'm sorry to say that if you read that list and found yourself feeling that way, you are still just as deceived.
I challenge you to go back and re-read those. Better yet... I'll do it for you.

-A house...though a form of shelter is not necessary. SHELTER, of some sort, ok... but that can come in many other forms other than a cushy, warm, dry, quiet house. Look at what some of the 'common' people of the bible were inhabiting much of their lifetime...tents...something many of us call 'roughing it.' :-P

-A car.......definitely not a necessity. There have been literal thousands of years without cars and people lived and got by just fine. A slower, rougher lifestyle, maybe...but then I don't know that that wasn't all too bad for humbling people. In fact, I was just reading some of our Little House in the Big Woods book to the boys the other night and Gray asked why 'Pa' walks everywhere. When I explained the time-period and circumstances to him, he admitted he was sort of jealous that Pa sees all the neat things and has all the neat stories from his travels on foot. I smiled and agreed with my innocently wise son.

-Clothes and shoes and the like...technically yes, these are a necessity, but all modesty and worldly 'appropriateness' aside...we *technically* could live without clothes. But don't worry...I'm not going to go all granola-chick on you and start streaking Roseburg to make a 'statement.' ;)
I'm just speaking in technicalities.

-Food in your fridge and cupboards...out of all the 'basics' list, this is the most necessary, though, I challenge you to admit that even in it's full description, it's a convenience.
Food? Yes. Necessary.
In a fridge and cupboards?? Ha!
Head over to Africa and ask an eating and surviving citizen to show you their 'fridge and cupboards'...and then take a picture of their immediate facial-expression after you explain what you have at home and text it to me, pretty please. ;-P

Do I really even need to move through the extras???
YEAH. I didn't think so.

So now, I beg you the question, again...
What, IN YOUR LIFE, is important????????


Let me just share with you perhaps the most pathetically profound 'ah ha' that I've recently come to these past months and then I beg of you to really... REALLY... set your pride down (in fact, maybe even punt it across my rambling-field) and then give yourself some real, quiet pondering time for this one...to let it reeeeeeally soak in.


PEOPLE.
People all around you--whether earthly family, God's family, friends, neighbors, co-workers, bosses, acquaintances or even (and especially!), strangers!
They are the single most important earthly aspect of this life.

Like our childhood sunday-school song 'Whether red or black or white' (to which my youngest adds pink to describe us, ha!)...
PEOPLE AND YOUR RELATIONSHIPS WITH THEM are the only thing of worth, in this life.
I'm beginning to really, truly understand the lessons of Mother Theresa, Mahatma Gandhi and the like...as the deepest ones that passing humans like them really grasped are relationship-related.
People-based.

Still not convinced???
Still think you love that 60-inch flat-screen a little more than your loving sibling or loyal best-friend?
I beg of you the cliched but honest example... when you have joyful news, do you run straight to your tv to share or do you grab straight for your smart-phone to text that loving sibling?! When you've been hurt, do you confide and cry to your tv or do you get into that 'life-convenience' car of yours and drive straight over to get some loves from your loyal best-friend?

So...
let's say you're one of those people who replies back, 'But I don't have anybody in my life. No family, no friends...not even co-workers or acquaintances. To that, you get no sympathy from me because in a world like this--like God designed it--where we are living in little quarters in rows and circles, patterns and acres, (generation after generation), we are literally surrounded by one another! You don't know people?
THEN GO MEET SOME.

That's another thing that's becoming more and more profound in this concept for me...
if relationships are all that matters and our interactions and treatment of one another is the only eternal thing that will go with us beyond this life, don't you think we ought to be waking up, every day with only one real intention--one true goal for those gifted hours--to interact lovingly, honestly and openly with those that we already have in our life and aim to make at least a half dozen new relationships within that day, too...even if just polite and positive acquaintances?!

Sorry if I'm preaching from my very raw, mortal view these days and it's just too much for you. At the same rate though...I say to those of you who feel that this is just 'unrealistic' or silly.........

ask yourself...

What is most important in my life? Who am I not speaking to right now, out of my own sheer pride and fallen-nature, and who out there might be in need of me if I do get my priorities straight??

Are the things that have taken up energy and space in my deceitful heart and mind worldy things that are going to just get left behind to burn up in the fire and brimstone when God returns and takes with Him only people??

Or are they things eternal?
People...and

Relationships. With. People.

*Side note: I wonder how many times have I typed the world 'people' in the last two minutes, ha!*


You're the only one that can answer this for yourself.

Meantime, I've answered it for myself...
so you'll excuse me now as I head outdoors, cause sitting behind this computer screen isn't exactly helping me reach my daily goal like I want to~