live like... you were dying???

The day Derek was born, I called our church (at the time). It was, after all, Wednesday evening and everyone would want to know. The young lady who answered the phone was a high school senior and the daughter of a couple who had made us feel so at home in our short time there. Now Derek is 17, and today that young lady's youngest son died at the age of 10, after fighting a brain tumor for over a year. I had hoped I would catch her to give her a cap Randy got. I'm sorry that I didn't get that cap to her and Andrew.

Shortly after I heard that, I read a blog post by a woman who has lost 200 pounds. It was called "45 Simple Actions to Start Losing Weight." One of the actions: "Deal with Stress." I'm not sure how to do that. I guess I need to figure that out. This woman wrote about the stress she had from her job. I know that feeling. Some days I hate it. This week, I'm trying to get everything done so I won't have to do it during Spring Break, next week. Unfortunately, I haven't figured out how to get everything in. I planned to go visit Billie and Andrew last weekend. I kept over-extending myself. I stayed too long at Mom's, then at Dad's, on Saturday. Not that I regret that, I don't regret visiting my parents at all... but then I was going to eat at a fundraiser with Randy. I then had to finish a transcription assignment that I didn't complete Friday evening, because I got a late start.

Then I had classwork to do before midnight Sunday night. Though I fooled around a little and napped on Sunday afternoon after lunch, I managed to get that done at a reasonable time. Then I didn't leave myself enough time to grade my students' work because when I got through with my classwork I played online Boggle for too long. I gave up Spider Solitaire for Lent and then turned around and started playing Boggle. I am not all that great at it, and last night I decided to give it up too.

Yesterday, a couple of students and I talked about that song, "Live Like You Were Dying." They didn't really get it. I said, you know, we shouldn't live our lives waiting for something to happen later. Live like you're dying doesn't mean lie in the bed waiting for the angels to escort you home. It means live now, instead of putting things off until later. I don't know if I adequately conveyed my feelings. But in the last two weeks, when so many people have died, it means so much more.

I started teaching in August of 2009 and in the whirlwind of never-ending work and the heat of that first classroom, I lost 13 pounds in 3 months. Since then I have put on almost 30 pounds. Oh, it varies from day to day. This morning it was actually 24.5 pounds. And in November 2008, I think I even weighed less than that Nov. 2009 weight. I hate that I've gained so much weight. I don't hate myself and I don't even hate my body, but I need to get in better shape because I want to be healthier. I know a great deal of my problem is stress. I come home, eat, and have to do more work before bed. Some nights (like tonight) I put off working until it's too late. I really don't waste a ton of time on Facebook, but I spend a lot of time looking for that elusive nuclear medicine job, or some other job that promises more money and more time to relax outside of work. Next thing I know, it's 10:30, I haven't read or relaxed, I'm depressed from not finding that "perfect" job, I've still got a sack full of ungraded work and piles of housework to do, and I need to get to bed.

I don't always work as efficiently as I should. Some days I write in my blog and spend 30 minutes on Facebook. I did a lot today and I could do a lot more. I could probably stay up all night. I stayed until 7:00 doing work and grading journals. I have two more classes of journals, posters to grade, and exams to grade. I'm going to bed. I need to start living again.

But I didn't want to turn this into a story about me. I wanted to say, we all need to live like we're dying. We need to live. We need to love. We may need to work too, but we can't keep putting off our lives, because the future isn't promised. Today is a gift and we need to be grateful for it.