HERE TODAY – GONE TOMORROW
PRACTICE: I am attached to_____________. (person, place, thing, thought etc.) Everything is temporary. I don’t care what it is- emotions, pain, thoughts, people, situations – you name it…it is ultimately temporary. I can almost hear you raising an eyebrow as you ponder this thought. Depending on your beliefs, even death though permanent is temporary. How different might you and I react to whatever our current situation if we looked at it as temporary? We do a great disservice to ourselves when we begin to live and think of things as forever or permanent. One who is parenting a colicky baby or a two-year old who is going through what is inappropriately labeled, the terrible twos will tell you that the thought of permanence becomes a heavy burden to carry. Yet when one is in the middle of the struggle day after day, it seems that there isn’t an end. The same is true when one is grieving or going through a divorce or in an episode of major depression. “When will it end? When will the fog lift? When will I stop grieving?” may be the questions being asked. ON THE OTHER HAND, we almost never ask when things are going great, “When will this end or when will the sky fall or when will this get worse.” If all things are temporary and I believe they are, then the unpleasant which we want to end and the pleasant we want to continue will suffer the same fate. So,what difference does acknowledgment of the temporary nature of all situations make? I believe it changes our ability to persevere through things like parenting challenges. Grief and depression become less daunting perhaps when we acknowledge that they are not the forever companion. It is temporary and time, therapy and/or medication will take care of it if we let it. My happy place, which isn’t going to last forever either, can be enhanced by relaxing and enjoying it here and now. It too, will change. A “here now and gone tomorrow” approach to life, grants us the courage and space to live in the moment – to soak it all in – to learn the lessons that are being generated in and through me and prepares me for the journey through the next temporary place. 2 Cor. 4:18
PONDER THIS THOUGHT – Knowing that nothing last forever gives me the freedom to embrace and engage all things more fully.
Comments