One Month to Live

Our church is starting a study called "One Month to Live". It is based on a book by the same name written by Kerry and Chris Shook. Tonight we met with our small group to discuss the introduction and watch the corresponding DVD. This is going to be a great study....one I wish I had done years ago. How would this have affected my parenting skills? Would it have made more of a difference in my little RADlets?

"Looking at old tombstones, I can't help but recognize that entire lives are now reduced before me to two dates and one little dash. Some monuments include facts or sayings, Bible verses or poignant memorials, but each person's life really comes down to what transpired between those two dates. it comes down to what's in the dash." (pg 5 "One Month to Live" by Shook)

Psalm 90:12 "Teach us to number our days and recognize how few they are, help us to spend them as we should" (TLB)

We were challenged to live for the next thirty days as if the doctor had just told us that we only have one month left to live. We were asked to think of five things that we would do different. Three of them had to do with parenting my children.

I am happy to announce that one of those things I was able to do with the children when I got home tonight. When the children were little we would tuck them in and pray with them every night. Even when we first adopted and had seven children we would go to each room and pray with the children that slept in that room before they went to sleep. As the children grew and began going to bed at different times we got lazy about it and just sent them to bed. But if I had only one month to live I would hug them, tell them I love them and pray with them every night....and possibly more than once during the day as well.

I think if I had only one month to live I would yell less at the children and try to play with them more. I wouldn't care how the house looked (OK so that wouldn't be any different than it is now:) I would spend more time with them and listen to them more. I wouldn't want their last memory of me to be one of me having a temper tantrum.

And the reality is that we don't know how much time we have left. I may only have twenty days left to live or two or maybe another sixty years.....only God knows. I just need to live each day as if it is my last.