Choices

My cousin passed away a few weeks ago, and she's been on my mind. She was young, beautiful and had her whole life ahead of her. But it was taken from her because of one stupid choice.

I've been thinking about choices and what they mean in our lives.
We are faced with choices everyday of our lives. Some are easy. Some are hard. Some seem easy on the surface, but turn out to be life changing.
We make choices everywhere- where we go, what we do. Each time we drive a car we make countless choices. Do we run that red light, ignore that stop sign or cut off that driver? Any one of these choices could end our lives.
I shudder to think of all the bad choices I made as a young person; so many things that could have brought me great harm, but for some reason, didn't.

I thought about calling her a few months ago, but worried about what I'd say and how it would be perceived. We weren't too close lately. Our differences in age and place in life separated us in the way it seems to for too many people. I prayed for her. She was on my mind a lot. But I didn't call. And however unintentional, that was my choice.

Her death was a total shock. I still can't really believe it. And I think at least in part because of it, I'm realizing that there are some things in life that are too important to worry about what people will think of you. Some things are much bigger than your fear of embarrassment, or your pride, or your desire to be liked. Some things just need to be said.

So here, for my little cousin, this is what I wish I would have told you.

Life is short, hurry to be kind.

I visited a friend this weekend that has recently lost her little boy. And I am sitting here right now thinking about her and crying terribly. The pain that she is feeling is just indescribable. She misses that little guy so much.

We dress our kids in the morning and just assume that we will tuck them into bed that night. Most days follow that predictable pattern. But the scary thing is, some don't. Some days that start out quite innocently, can turn into nightmares right before our eyes. We think (hope) it only happens to other people. But it doesn't. It happens to anyone. It happened to her. It happened to my own parents.

There is no horror that I can think of that would be worse for me than to hold my child and watch helplessly as he died. I don't know how I would survive that. I don't know how she will survive it. I don't know how my parents survived it.

There was a park bench near where we used to live that was inscribed with the words "life is short, hurry to be kind". I have always loved that. And it's not just "be kind", but "hurry to be kind". Hurry. We hurry so much in our days doing ( in the grand scheme of things) meaningless stuff. We hurry to work, and then hurry home. We hurry to the grocery store, to make dinner, to bathe the kids and get them in bed. All so that we'll have a little more time to do some more stuff we're in such a hurry to do. What we ought to be doing is hurrying to do the truly important stuff.

Hurry to hug your kids. Hurry to show them every day over and over again how much they are loved, and enjoyed, and cherished. Hurry to speak kindly to them. Hurry to touch them only gently and with love. Hurry to kiss your spouse. Hurry to ignore his dirty socks on the floor next to the hamper. Hurry to call your dad. Hurry to go to lunch with your mom. Hurry to stop and talk to a neighbor before you close the garage door. Hurry to ask for forgiveness. Hurry to forgive.
We don't know how long any of these people will be in our lives.
Or how long we will be in theirs.

And if you get a minute, please say a prayer for my friend and her sweet little boy. And for his brother and sisters who miss him and don't understand why he left.

I have no idea what I'm doing...

This is my very first blog post! Woo hoo! Hopefully, I'll figure out how all of this stuff works soon.