Some people feel as if they have to live a life as close to perfection as possible. Their children need to wear designer clothes, they need to drive the best cars, live in big homes, go on at least one family vacation a year to an exotic place…..they insist on keeping up with the Jones’.
Someone close to me many years ago tried to put me into that lifestyle of “keeping up appearances” but it never fit well for me. Designer clothes are not top priority, I drive what I can afford, and vacations….well they are few and far between because the majority of my time off is spent at the hospital with my little boy.
We are coming to an end of a three week hospital stay so my husband and I have been ships passing in the night as we take turns staying for a few days at a time with our youngest (and trying to keep life as normal as possible at home for our oldest). When you are living at the hospital you see the same faces over and over. It seemed that every time I would go to the nourishment room to get ice or coffee I would run into the same mom. We would exchange pleasantries and one evening she looked particularly upset. I asked her if she was okay and I could see in her eyes she was not. She opened up and talked to me about her daughter. This was a single mom with her teenaged daughter who lived out of town. She did not have anyone to relieve her for a night. She told me how she was not working and scraping by so that she could be with her daughter…because that is what matter. “Stuff” didn’t matter, she said. It’s not what is important.
Time together as a family is what is important. Not the “stuff” around us. My son suffers from his bleeding disorder and when we are in the hospital in the midst of crazy pain and on the other side of it finally healing what is important is that we are together. The stuff in our lives is a distant memory during these times.
And the most important part of our lives is the center of what we believe to be true. And for me it is that I am a masterpiece….a flawed, messy, unique masterpiece created by God. The God who made the heavens and the earth. The God who knew me before I was a gleam in the eyes of my parents. The God who has designed my journey so that I may serve others even when in the nourishment room of a hospital to offer hope and encouragement to a mother who feels alone.
Think twice about the stuff in your life. Years from now the Jones’ won’t remember.
Today I Am Thankful For:
- An empty suitcase
- A home cooked meal
- Cell phones
- A pain free day
- Hearing my mother’s voice through her best friend
