So I was driving Magoo to school this morning relishing the silence in between fielding questions about the colors of trees and the nature of physics, and the phrase “It is finished” popped into my head. It was a strange phrase to have pop into my head as usually popping thoughts are of the intrusive, OCD type rather than of the “last words of Jesus” type. But it got stuck in there and I couldn’t shake it.
I think it was the word, “it” that struck me the most for we don’t often think of life as an it. Instead we often see life as moments. Normal, everyday, commonplace moments:
changing diapers
kissing boo boos
cooking meals
watching as little pigtails and mary janes run off into school with an oversize backpack bouncing along the way.
And we see life as emotions: fear, sadness, joy, love, hope, boredom, inspiration.
Every day we are here, claiming our space on this planet, and we are often completely stuck in our current situation, letting it define our lives and our interpretations of life. Our spirits are eternal and yet we often let them get stuck in the temporal – in the physical world we inhabit daily. After all, it’s what’s most present, most accessible, and most all encompassing.
But what if we take a step back from our moments and instead took a look at our life as an “it,” as a mission that has a specific beginning and a specific ending that was known if not predetermined before time even began? What if we stopped viewing life as a series of events that happen to us and instead look at it as our opportunity — our one chance? If we looked at it as the gift we were given to determine and live out our mission, our purpose? As our opportunity to define that very purpose?
We were given these breaths, this beating heart, these limbs and muscles and synapses. We were given these gifts and these blessings and these hardships and these struggles. But with the time we were given… what are we going to use it for? What is our purpose? It’s the question that we each answer, whether we want to or not, with each and every breath we take.
What purpose will you serve? What mission will you undertake? What will you do with your “it?”
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