Breakfast with my mom at Emerald Pointe Senior Living Community in Keizer, Oregon. We got her moved into her new apartment and I'm staying a few nights to check it out. I could adjust to a breakfast like this everyday!
A good friend of mine reminded me this past week that most of Jesus' ministry occurred when he was interrupted while on his way to a town or planning to go somewhere. Thanks for pointing this out, Dave Pearson!
As I mentioned in my last post, I'm still in the Salem area. The reasons for the delay continue to mount. But in light of this, I'm now beginning to see I've been romanticizing the journey ahead of me along the uttermost road, at least when it comes to being an LYGO kind of person. I told myself that once I hit the road that my demeanor, outlook, attitude, and behavior would change in order to meet the challenges and opportunities that appear along the road. My state of mind would be such that I would rise up and LYGO according to the need in front of me.
Hmm. There's something not right with this picture. And here it is:
The time to LYGO is now . . . not when I "hit the road." The opportunity to love is in the next moment, within the next breath I breathe.
So it is with all of us. No matter where you're at in life, don't wait for a future plan to unfold and come into being before you decide to give your best in the present. To be fixated on a goal or an ideal, even if it seems to be your heart's greatest desire, is to miss out on whatever the moment holds . . . and it's in the moment where life exists. As the old saying goes, "Don't forget to stop and smell the roses." Even though my departure has been delayed numerous times, it's no excuse NOT to live life to the full each day in the meantime. To do so is to negate the future.
To be an LYGO person is to expect and embrace interruptions. It just might be that the interruptions and obstacles of life are the essential conditions in which love germinates . . . the requisite for love. And this might very well be a guiding principle for life as a human being, that is, if you can reduce life to a principle, and I don't believe you can. But, in order to talk about such topics as love we're confined to words. Therefore, we do the best we can using words to point in the direction of life and things of ultimate importance and meaning. There's so much here I could write about. In fact, this has given me another topic to explore in "Love Your Guts Out."
So, the next time you're in a hurry to hit the road but run into a roadblock, embrace the moment and enjoy being interrupted by love!