Living Ecclesiastically

What do you have to celebrate today? What is something you’re grateful for, that you can rejoice in? What, in life, keeps you going day by day? And how often to you sit back and just enjoy life for what it is?

I’ve realized a few things in the past week or so (since I turned the ripe old age of 24) that I never really took the time to think about before. For much of my life I’ve been “too busy” for just about everything. I guess that’s what a girl's life becomes when she’s worked since the age of 13, and has rarely had the time or the money to really go and experience many adventures. As I sat in LA on my birthday this year, it hit me, “I’ve been wasting my life, running around like a chicken with my head cut off, worried about everything under the sun – and what do I have to show for it? Wrinkles, stress, and a body that’s practically falling apart at 24.” As I continued pondering this dilemma on the plane home from my favorite sunny place in the US, I was hit with a ton of bricks: I haven’t been living my life! I’ve been slowly, grudgingly dragging through it. I decided, this year is going to be a different story – no more “too busy” or “too over committed” for anything. Prioritizing the important, the things that last, the memories, has become my goal. And Ecclesiastes has knocked my socks off...

The book of Ecclesiastes is one of the most depressing books in the Bible, at least for me. However, recently I’ve read it with a whole new light, thanks to the insight brought by Matt Chandler at The Village Church. Conviction swept over me as I realized that so much of my own life feels so incredibly “meaningless”. There seems to be no direction, no reason for my existence. I’ve become dissatisfied with my everyday, boring life, and have craved some kind of new adventure ever since the “daily grind” started. The thing I didn’t realize is that no matter where I am, no matter what I’m doing, there’s going to be some slight sense of “everyday”. No matter how many quotes I do at work, or how many loads of laundry I do at home, or how many meetings, practices, coffee dates, etc. I have - there’s still going to be another one tomorrow, another month, another year. “Everything is meaningless!” to quote the great King Solomon. And I'm stuck with my thoughts...

Realization #1: Life sucks sometimes – deal with it! Wow, talk about a Debbie Downer moment – but it’s true, right? Life has a tendency to throw us some curve balls every now and then that leave us thinking, “what the heck was that?!”. On the positive side, every bad situation that comes our way, usually leads to something good in the end. When the pains and frustrations of life come our way... what are our options? Well, we could just sit around, moping about how sad and stupid our lives are, or we could…

Realization #2: God gives us others for a reason. There’s this verse in Ecclesiastes that says, “Eat, drink, and be merry”. Let me clarify that this does not mean get drunk and party all the time. No, this is something deeper, more fulfilling, and utterly delightful. This verse is pretty much telling us to go out with friends, have dinner together, do coffee, bake, have movie nights, meet for Bible Study, whatever you do in life – share it with friends. For at the end of a long, tedius, frustrating week isn’t it an incredible blessing to be able to meet up with someone wonderful for Happy Hour, or have a movie night with someone near and dear?

And I say… it’s time to start living our lives Ecclesiastically! Not in the mode of being too busy for friendship, too overwhelmed for relationship with others; no – what we need to do is start planning more outings, scheduling more dates, and really getting to know those around us. For we get to take the memories and the friendships with us when we leave this world… but everything else (the house, the money, the cars, the techy toys, the designer fashions) all get to stay here. He with the most toys still dies with nothing.

So as I enter into my 24th year of life, not quite where I expected I’d be, but on my way to something incredible, it’s time for me to start living my own life Ecclesiastically. Living for the memories and the friendships, and not worrying so much about the stresses of the everyday. No, I choose today to go to the Pumpkin Patch (because I’ve always wanted to and never had “time), invite friends over for dinner/brunch/coffee/whatever, meet with new people and really try to connect with them, live up the Holidays for everything they are (I’m talking Nutcrackering, gingerbread house making, decorating up a storm, Christmas cookie delivery service, giving to those in need, and remembering the Reason for the Season daily), and truly making the 24th year of life the brightest, richest, most edifying year of my life.

24 – here I come! :-)