that is not her

Usual Monday morning plans will come to a halt today as my husband and I will attend the funeral of a friend. And I am struck by this. How it takes a person's dying to get us to press pause, to put on the back burner those things that we place at the top of our to-do list - because if we do not get to it mountains will fall and the entire world will blow up. I thought this same thought at my Uncle's funeral. How on a Tuesday morning, people usually too busy to pick up a phone, recognized the importance of family and friends, called in sick, and showed up. "We ought to do this more often" we said, nodding our heads, gently embracing, leaving sweet kisses on tear stained cheeks. But we never did and we never do. Unless someone dies.

The finality of death hits you hard when you are kneeled before a shell of a person you once knew to be larger than life itself. And the beauty of death is recognizing just that...the body is a shell...that person no longer there...and it makes you reconsider the amount of work we put into our outer selves...all the yoga and running and botox and tummy tucks and for what? For people to kneel in front of your perfect body and say, "that is not her" ?

Let us not wait until we and those we love are mere shells before we kneel down and whisper a prayer and thank God for the life that we can not believe is already gone. Let us not wait until our dearest loved ones look upon our own selves, shaking their heads saying, "that is not her" before we care for our souls, claim our true identity based on nothing outwardly seen, so when we leave our shell behind, there is no question that we lived and loved well for His greater glory and not our own.