Living Intentionally

          I found a grey hair this morning. Okay, if I’m 
being perfectly honest it wasn’t actually the first one, but it felt more significant since I’m turning 30 in a few days. It got me thinking about some of the journal entries I wrote when I was sick and how convinced I was that once I turned 18 and could make my own legal decisions  (including moving out or refusing treatment) the eating disorder would get the better of me. I truly believed that I was going to die. Yet here I am.
          Sometimes I look back at that time of my life and wonder “why me?” I don’t wonder why I got sick. I wonder the opposite. With a disease that has such a high mortality rate why did I get better? Why did God choose to heal me?
          I’ll probably never know the answer to this question and that’s okay. As painful as the memory of those dark times are, though, I also never want to forget them because the fact that I made it through to the other side is a testimony to God’s great love and mercy. After all that He has done for me I don’t ever want to take my life and health for granted.
            My mom used to talk about living intentionally. She meant not letting yourself get swept up in the chaos of daily life but instead being deliberate about what you do with your time and how you treat others. Maybe you’ve had some kind of wakeup call like I did that demonstrated how short and fragile life really is. Or maybe you haven’t yet. Either way you can still make the choice to be intentional about how you live your life.

Take a minute to ask yourself:

• Am I happy with the way that I’m living?
• Am I making time for the things that are most important to me? (Not using the extra time that I have after completing a hundred other tasks but intentionally setting aside the time)
• Am I recognizing and giving thanks for all of the blessings in my life?

          If you’re unhappy with the answers to any of these questions then commit to making a change. It’s not too late now, but it’s going to be at some point so don’t wait. It’s not easy. This is still something that I struggle with and have to remind myself to work on every day. We live in a culture that puts so much emphasis on productivity and always looking forward to the next big thing. Habits that have become deeply engrained over the years are extremely difficult to break. But if we’re always looking forward to the next thing we’re never truly being present in the moment. We can’t live in the future or the past. If we’re never living in the present are we really living at all?

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