I wrote this piece as I was processing a death of a sweet friend, Anna Rigdon Norman. She passed away the day after I wrote this on May 20th, 2016. It has taken a couple of months for me to be able to post this, but the lessons have been ongoing since then. I am so thankful for my life-sharers!
I have a friend who is likely leaving this life very soon, if not today. She is surrounded by those who love her after a long battle with cancer. She has raised her three littles these last 6 years with an awareness that her time is very limited, even as she fought for each of those days with the bravery of a queen.
As I send my thoughts and blessings her way, to her husband and family, I ponder my own blessed life. I consider how life is so real, and how it feels more real when I hear that such real things are taking place. Even as cartoons blaze in the living room, kids argue over stuff, the dishes sit dirty and the cat screams at me, someone is letting go of this real life for an even more real one. She is saying goodbye, and those who have shared her life are seeing her off on her way to heaven.
It makes me consider my life, of course. My life is not overshadowed with an acute awareness that my time is short, though of course it is. I get to breath in the spring air, and simply live in my moment, without the likelihood of it being my last opportunity to do so. I feel blessed, though I know she is too. She surrounded right now by those who shared in her life, who have seen her suffer and fight. They were the people she embraced her limited days with, they were ones who she wants to remember, who will carry her memory closest. They are her life sharers.
I have been considering my own life sharers a lot lately. I have been pondering not only this life, but my past years and my past seasons and those who shared it then. I think back on the times when I felt the most full and blessed, and then I can't help but connect those memories with the people I shared them with. I know I loved each of them when I was there, but I don't think I fully understand the impact of their life on mine.
Maybe it is age, I turned 38 last week, but I am more aware of the intertwining of lives now than I was before. I see how a close friend changes me, how my best friend directs my thoughts, how my husband has altered my tastes and preferences, and my children's lives have affected my own understanding of myself. These life-sharers, they don't just hang out around me, they breath my same air. We go the same church, we are in the same groups, we are share the same circles, we do that same stuff.
We share cars, we share books, we share kids, we share food, we share tears. We embrace joyful things, we cry when there is suffering amongst us, we praise God on behalf of each others answered prayers, we ask God to come through when needed. We aren't just friends, brothers, sisters and wives. We are life sharers.
We share the same life, the same space and time. We are fully intertwined in each other and exchange grace in various forms between us. You aren't just in the room with me a lot, you share my life with me. You help evolve my dreams, you mold my passions. Your stories, jokes, your posts, your words they change me a little at a time. And I change you.
It increases the importance of those relationships in my own spirit. I want to share life with people. Not everyone, just a few. But, I believe God put a desire there to share life. We weren't meant to be an independent orb on this earth. We are connected in ways we do not understand, I think.
Who are your life-sharers? Thank God for them, I know I am doing that for mine today.
I have a friend who is likely leaving this life very soon, if not today. She is surrounded by those who love her after a long battle with cancer. She has raised her three littles these last 6 years with an awareness that her time is very limited, even as she fought for each of those days with the bravery of a queen.
As I send my thoughts and blessings her way, to her husband and family, I ponder my own blessed life. I consider how life is so real, and how it feels more real when I hear that such real things are taking place. Even as cartoons blaze in the living room, kids argue over stuff, the dishes sit dirty and the cat screams at me, someone is letting go of this real life for an even more real one. She is saying goodbye, and those who have shared her life are seeing her off on her way to heaven.
It makes me consider my life, of course. My life is not overshadowed with an acute awareness that my time is short, though of course it is. I get to breath in the spring air, and simply live in my moment, without the likelihood of it being my last opportunity to do so. I feel blessed, though I know she is too. She surrounded right now by those who shared in her life, who have seen her suffer and fight. They were the people she embraced her limited days with, they were ones who she wants to remember, who will carry her memory closest. They are her life sharers.
I have been considering my own life sharers a lot lately. I have been pondering not only this life, but my past years and my past seasons and those who shared it then. I think back on the times when I felt the most full and blessed, and then I can't help but connect those memories with the people I shared them with. I know I loved each of them when I was there, but I don't think I fully understand the impact of their life on mine.
Maybe it is age, I turned 38 last week, but I am more aware of the intertwining of lives now than I was before. I see how a close friend changes me, how my best friend directs my thoughts, how my husband has altered my tastes and preferences, and my children's lives have affected my own understanding of myself. These life-sharers, they don't just hang out around me, they breath my same air. We go the same church, we are in the same groups, we are share the same circles, we do that same stuff.
We share cars, we share books, we share kids, we share food, we share tears. We embrace joyful things, we cry when there is suffering amongst us, we praise God on behalf of each others answered prayers, we ask God to come through when needed. We aren't just friends, brothers, sisters and wives. We are life sharers.
We share the same life, the same space and time. We are fully intertwined in each other and exchange grace in various forms between us. You aren't just in the room with me a lot, you share my life with me. You help evolve my dreams, you mold my passions. Your stories, jokes, your posts, your words they change me a little at a time. And I change you.
It increases the importance of those relationships in my own spirit. I want to share life with people. Not everyone, just a few. But, I believe God put a desire there to share life. We weren't meant to be an independent orb on this earth. We are connected in ways we do not understand, I think.
Who are your life-sharers? Thank God for them, I know I am doing that for mine today.
"For just as each of us has one body with many members, and these members do not all have the same function, so in Christ we, though many, form one body, and each member belongs to all the others."
Romans 12:4-5
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