No loose ends

"So teach us to number our days,
That we may gain a heart of wisdom." Psalm 90:12

I have a friend whose 17 year old son has been very, very sick for 4 years. He is the only person in the United States to have three particularly serious medical conditions simultaneously. At this moment, he has been in the hospital for nearly three months and is gravely ill. They are having to talk about the worst even as they pray fervently for a miracle. 

I am praying with them. Prayer moms are praying with them. Our youth group and youth leaders and youth pastor are praying with them. 

About three weeks ago, the first TSA agent to be killed in the line of duty was shot repeatedly by a disturbed man. He was a loving family man who left behind a wife and two kids. I kiss my husband goodbye each day now with a new seriousness, a new heaviness that this man could have been him. 

And I am six months away from a big birthday. I won't tell you which one. I'll just say it's a big one. 

I feel myself not as strong or as mobile as I used to be. I creak a bit in the mornings when I get out of bed. By the end of the day I am often weary. I value being at home and quiet, while in younger years I was so ready to be on the go. 

I find myself shutting my mouth a lot more these days, choosing fewer battles. My adult sons don't want to hear what mom has to say, any more than I wanted to hear what my parents had to say when I was their age. I trust God a lot more often to handle things with them. He'll perfect the things that concern them way better than I can. 

Life is somehow just a bit more precious to me lately. I really thank God for my bed, for sunrises and sunsets, for simple things in my days that are simple blessings. I thank Him for quiet mornings and the smell of my almost-10 year old who probably won't let me hug and smell him for a whole lot longer. I notice things like the smiles of little children I pass on my walk. 

I'm not old :-)  but I am, for the first time in my life, feeling like I am headed that way. I'm not sad about it, but I do think about regrets of my younger years. Sometimes I wish I still had the energy to dance a ballet or play vigorously in the park with my young kids. Oh wait, I don't have toddlers or little ones anymore....

Teach me to number my days, Lord. Teach me to live wisely and well (as the Message puts that verse). Teach me to really make every day count. I think it's at this stage of life that we begin to realize, as Moses did when he wrote Psalm 90, that every day is a gift and we can't take it for granted. It's at this age that we realize, perhaps, that we have a limited number of days left. Teach me how to finish my race well, whether it goes one year more or 30 years more. Make me mindful of the legacy I can leave behind if I do this wisely. 

At the funeral for the TSA officer, his family member said something that really struck me: that he had lived life so much in love with his wife and his kids that he died with "no loose ends." That's how I want to end my days here on this earth, before I see my Savior face to face and live with Him for all eternity. 

No loose ends.