Sunday, January 12, 2014

A Life That Matters

The other day my friend prayed for me that one of the things that would mark my last semester would be good, renewing relationships--which is something I have in no way been asking for myself or even thought of asking for myself, but which I was so thankful for her to have prayed for me.  Because I really need that.  Because it's really hard sometimes, the past few years in particular. 

I had dinner with a different friend a few nights ago, and it was one of the most affirming things that I have experienced in a good, long time.  Do you know what he said to me?  He told me that he's noticed that I'm always the one listening, and so he figured that it would be nice for me to have someone to listen to me sometime, and asked me to share with him my life story.  The whole thing.  And when I tried to give him the politely abridged version, he stopped me and told me that he wanted to hear the whole thing, not just the highlights.  Wow.

We continued our conversation a couple of days later, since our dinner was cut short (we didn't make it past middle school...), and one of the things we were discussing was our vision of the successful life: when we started thinking about it, what we thought about thinking about it, what it is... Anyway, I watched this today, and all that little anecdote was meant to set up was that, though I've thought some about success (particularly around the time when I jumped off the pre-MD ship and swam as fast as I could to the pre-PA flotilla), when I saw this, there was no question: 

These surrendered people, this great and extravagant and mundane love?  This is the successful life.

(link)

P.S.  Shout out to my life-story friend, who has no idea that I have a blog and will probably never read this... but if he ever does, a most genuine thank you.  But by then I think it will be redundant, as it would be silly not to say "thank you" in person.

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