Life or Lucre?

Flying back from a last minute trip to Charlotte where my younger brother, only 47, was "suddenly" diagnosed with kidney failure, heart failure, and high blood pressure. I put "suddenly" in quotes because the reality is that this had been developing for years and began manifesting itself in the final form a couple of months ago, ending in a crescendo of a life altering visit to the emergency room. In The Sun also Rises by Ernest Hemingway, Mike describes his going bankrupt as "Slowly at first, then all of a sudden." The same is clearly true of many things in our life; health, mental well being, personal finances, loss of faith, relationships and more. The reasons are many, and hardly worth mentioning except for the lessons learned by Keith and others. They include an irrational loathing for modern medicine and reliance on "natural medicine" that when combined, created cognitive dissonance even in the face of an obviously worsening condition. The result is that he will likely be on oxygen for the rest of his life, have to schedule himself around dialysis three or four times a week, take a bucket of medications, have one of the most restrictive diets known to modern medicine, and have many choices in his now dramatically shortened life eliminated; all because of a dangerous script and filter that he applied to his life. Psychology, fear, isolation, the list could go on, but the end result is that through his choices earlier in life, he is now sentenced to a very restrictive life drive by the very thing he railed against, the modern medicine that saved his life last week. There is no doubt that if he had waited another day or two, perhaps a week, he would have died.

Moving forward he will learn to live his new life, and mom now has something to do. At 77 she becomes caregiver to a disabled man. Emotionally for me, it's heartbreaking. Being a nurse I know it could have been avoided entirely, and as a brother and son, I see that many of their choices in life are forfeit. I will, of course, always be available for calls, advice, consoling and emotional support. But what do I take away from this? In what areas of my life do I have a cognitive dissonance influencing my decisions? Obviously my health is in the forefront; I need to lose 80 pounds, now. I need to build my core strength and flexibility to preserve my back. I'm overdue for dental work and due for sinus surgery. Those are the easy ones. But what about the bigger questions? The gorilla in the room?

I wrote a poem called Three Months to Live, that posed the question, "If you knew you had only three months to live, would you be living where you live and doing what you do?" That's a hulking gorilla of a question. The answer for me, is yeah, I'd be ok living where I live. I'd rather be on a tropical island, but living where I live now in a cute house with room for a garden in the country is just fine. The larger part of the question is would I be doing what I do, more specifically how would I spend my days if I only had three months to live. I teach about roles, goals and priorities and perhaps should have been taking my own medicine. Considering my roles, especially how it affects and influences my day to day and daily activities, I'm out of balance, not the totally out of whack balance, but the imbalance that results from ignoring what's really important, where your love lies, and where you have the greatest impact. My vocational role for the past several years has been a nurse; I'm good at it, communicate well with patients (I think,) and am currently the Clinical Educator for a small hospital. I enjoy teaching and creating curriculum, not so keen on drudgery, tracking, and people who won't take responsibility for themselves. I'm good at the big picture stuff and direct a couple of projects along those lines. The work is good, I enjoy it, but I certainly don't wake up Monday morning excited to go to work.

So what of my roles? Disciple of Christ, husband, dad, writer, and gardener. I pray, but there's really no time for soaking, probing prayer. Leonora and I have a heart for the hungry and homeless and we do some to that end. I've wanted to write on theology and discipleship, but that has been an effort of fits and starts. There is so much more that I could be doing as a disciple. As a husband, I love my wife. We're empty nesters now, but our leisure time, due in large part to fatigue, is spent in front of the television. We got rid of DirecTV, maybe it's time for Netflix and Amazon to go as well, but probably not. We spend very little time exploring our world, and intimacy is mostly sitting next to each other on the couch ... with the dogs. We could have a much deeper relationship. Dad, well the kids are grown. Sarah has her own life as a teacher in Southern California and Jonathan is living the dream working on his Marine Biology PhD in Australia. A writer? Writers write, and I do on occasion, but I freaking love it. This is probably the most glaring area of role deficiency. To be a writer or not be a writer; that is the question. YES! an emphatic, unreserved yes. So the question is how do I transition my good paying job to making a living as a writer?. And gardening? We're working on our own, and I run the community garden which blends with the discipleship since half of what we harvest is given to the poor.

Recognizing your roles and calling is so important. There have been people in church who seek their "calling" when in fact they're just trying to be special. What I'm talking about is what God has intended you to do; the answer to that not only serves Him, but provides for your worldly needs. Of this I am certain. Life has to be more than the hours you sacrifice in exchange for lucre. There are a lot of resources on the internet to "find your purpose," but it can really be quite simple. If you won $100M (that's one hundred million dollars) what would you do with your life? I've run the numbers and paying off all the debt for family members, buying everyone a house, funding all the nieces and nephews education, a ridiculous vacation, and a couple of cars only comes up to $10M. Don't even bother with that part, once you and your family have all the possible stuff you could want, how would you spend your life? How will you serve God? What value will you add to the world? And most importantly, what's your new day look like? This is a turn on the motivational question of what would you do if you knew with certainly that you could not fail?

I pray for my brothers complete and miraculous recovery, but lacking a miracle, he's working with a "new normal" he never imagined two weeks ago. What if the same thing happens to you or me? Chances are it won't, but spend some time talking to God to figure out this thing called life. Make the most of it. Glorify the Lord. Help a bunch of people. Make sure your loved ones know that you love them. And don't just trade the hours of your life for money.