Can I be honest? Sometimes, I take Terence for granted. Sometimes, I snooze my alarm until the last possible minute and then I leap out of bed to try to shove an hour’s worth of stuff into the 30 minutes I have until I must get the kids out of the door, and I forget to even say “Good Morning” to this man that God has given me to share life with. Sometimes, I rush off the phone with him to complete some task on my never-ending, never-going-to-get-done to-do list. And shamefully, sometimes I get a little annoyed when he slows me down from my break-neck pace, for us to pray together. I was reminded of all of that this week when we lost an important part of our village.
Many of us hear this message so much, that it’s become cliché… “Don’t take life for granted.” “You never know…” “Here today, gone tomorrow.” But how many of us really sit in that realization? That someone left home to go to work today but won’t be returning home this evening. That “tomorrow” didn’t come for someone this morning. We literally just had an experience where we took our kids to visit someone on Monday night, and then he died before we all woke up on Tuesday morning. Talk about a wake-up call!
I cringe as I think about all of the times I’ve assumed I could put something off until later. Not a task, but a conversation. An apology. A connection. A moment that matters. I don’t want to continue living that way. I want to be intentional about how I express love to those that God has blessed me with. Especially Terence. It’s so easy to take him for granted. Easy to assume that he’ll be here tomorrow. That we’ll actually have those 75 years of marriage that we pray for. The reality is, we don’t know if that’s the case. But even if we are married for 75 years, how much richer will those 75 years be if I’m intentional about loving and cherishing him Every.Single.Day.
I’m inviting you to join me in choosing to be intentional about not taking your spouse, kids, or loved ones for granted. It doesn’t mean that you’ll be perfect in demonstrating love for them, but that you’ll be intentional in choosing the kinder word, the forgiveness, and the grace that it takes to build up a relationship instead of tearing it down. If you’ll join me, comment “I’m In” below.
