My Prayer For Old People

I visited a friend at a nursing home today, and cried all the way home. It wasn't that my friend was suffering so badly—she is in pain and discomfort but has a beautiful spirit about it all—it was because of the other people I saw in there, the people with nothing but their own souls.

Their minds are gone.

Their bodies are deteriorating.

They have lost the things that we think make us human: beauty, talent, promise, wit, creativity, future. 

And what remains? Their heart and soul, quietly beating while the rest of us bustle around and try to care for them, wondering what on earth we'll do with them until they finally give up and die. And the truly frightening thing? Many of us—perhaps most of us—will be there too, one day. I might be one of those women in a sanitized hallway, crouched in my wheelchair, gray hair thin and wispy, draped in smelly old clothes, eyes glazed, drooping lips and toothless gums smacking together in horrible incoherence.

Will This Scratch My Soul?

Just a moment ago I was about to have a thought, the negative kind that comes unbidden when you see or hear something that annoys or angers you:  "Why does it gave to be this way?" "What is wrong with him?" "Will this never end?" Etcetera.      

Then a thought hit me, "Will this scratch my surface?" I was thinking about myself like the screen of my new iPod Touch, pristine, if a little smudged. Getting upset, putting a wrinkle in my forehead, huffing to myself--in a way it would be like dragging a razor across the surface of my soul.  

So often we are careful of our "stuff", the things we own like cars and clothes and technology,  and we try so hard to keep them in great condition. Can't you see a certain guy you know who spends hours washing and waxing his "baby"? And what about that heart-wrench you feel at the sound of your favorite sweater ripping on a sharp corner? I  know all about that (I'm the girl that reads her books almost closed so that the binding won't break), and I also know that I'm not nearly so careful in making sure I don't rip or break the gentle spirit that God gave me.

In his amazing book Mere Christianity, C.S. Lewis laid put his theory that every action turns a "screw" inside our souls,

It Is Unto the Lord

If my life is mediocre, it is unto the Lord.

If my life is extraordinary, it is unto the Lord

Warm, a photo by Casey David on Flickr.

What Do They See? What Do I See?

I wish that people could see all of the good of me and none of the bad.

I wish that people could see all of my talents and not see my downfalls.

I wish that people could see all of my knowledge and not see my ignorance.

I wish that people could see all of my love and not see my annoyance.

I wish that people could see that calm, productive, peacemaker side of me and not the flustered, lazy, argumentative side.

There are times when one looks at oneself and wonders, “What does everyone else see?”

Living Advice: Just Start

How do you craft a compelling life-story? You start by just writing.


Your life is a blank page, ready for possibilities. Sometimes we balk at putting pen to to paper, worry about spattering ink blots and breaking the binding. But what is an empty book? What is an empty life?


It's not worth living.


So go ahead--open your book and start writing. 
What is one thing that you can do today to begin writing a story that's worth living? 

Open Book, Blank Pages, a photo by DougitDesign.com / Doug Aghassi on Flickr.

Pain of Change

Today I was thinking about exercise--one of the few things I come close to loathing. Some people seem to get a strange high out of beating up their bodies and sweating and smelling and aching. I don't. I've been looking into the BodyRock.tv "home workout movement" (something that a friend of mine is passionate about), and found myself wishing for an exercise program that wasn't so hard and so long, and that didn't hurt so much.

Guess what: nothing is going to change if it doesn't hurt.

The reason exercise hurts is because it's changing something inside your body. If I want to change the size of my biceps or the shape of my abs or the look of my legs, I've got to hurt first. If you're not hurting, you're not changing. Maybe exercise doesn't hurt you, but something has to (self-discipline, prioritization, donating time, sticking it out, growing). 

One more thought, "We change our behavior when the pain of staying the same becomes greater than the pain of changing" (Henry Cloud). What do you want to change in your life, and how will it hurt to do that?

AmbassadorSummit_1372, a photo by lululemon athletica on Flickr.