Get Busy Living

In the past, I have sunk into depressions when challenges have come my way, maybe primarily because I concentrate so hard on my own woes during times of trial that I can’t see anything else. This time around, God has me looking outside myself and He’s reminding me every day that there are people who have it way worse than I do, that others still need me, that I can make a positive impact on this world, and that life shouldn’t stop because somebody has to have surgery. There are baseball banquets to organize, end-of-school-year activities to get involved with, people celebrating 10 years of marriage who really could use a dinner alone and don’t have a babysitter, old people who need love, kids who need help with their homework, teachers who need help in the classroom before Open House on May 22…… the list goes on and on.

I’m getting involved.

Thanks to God’s guidance, this has been my way of responding to the fact that I need more surgery and still have thyroid tissue (probably cancer) in my neck: Life is meant to be lived. “Carpe diem,” as the movie Dead Poets’ Society said. And I keep thinking of that line in The Shawshank Redemption—“Get busy living, or get busy dying.”

I’ll take “get busy living,” thank you very much.