One Month to Live Day #1

I'm reading the book "One Month to Live" by Kerry and Chris Shook. I started it a few months ago and got to day 12 I think and then went out of town and never got back to it. So, I am starting again along with a couple of friends.

I think the overall message of the book is to live your life to the fullest and make everyday count. I will turn 40 in August of this year and January of next year marks my 20th year of having diabetes. So, it will not be long before I will have lived more of my life WITH diabetes than without it.

When I look back over my life I realize how often I have let things hold me back in life. I see myself sitting on the sidelines WAY too often. I think I am slowly learning to live a bit more and enjoy life. Too often I have let my shyness, or my weight, or my thinking it wasn't the right time to do/have something (like pets), etc. get in the way of really getting in the game of life and enjoying it.

The first quote in chapter one of the OMTL book is "Death is more universal than life; everyone dies but not everyone lives." - Alan Sachs

From the book - when most people are faced with terminal condtions, they make radical changes as a result of their awareness of their terminal condition. They take license to say what they really feel and do what they really want. They ask for forgiveness and forgive others. They no longer think only of themselves but reach out to those they love and let them know how much they mean. They take risks they never would have taken before and allow themselves to lay worry aside and gratefully accept each new day. They seem to gain a new clarity about their priorities like their relationship with God and leaving legacies that will endure.

Wouldn't it be wonderful to spend your life so that if you discovered you only had a month t live, you wouldn't need to change a thing?

Be brutally honest with yourself. Your time on earth is limited. Shouldn't you start making the most of it? If you knew you had one month to live, you would look at everything from a different perspective. Many of the things you do now that seem so important would immediately become meaningless. You would have total clarity about what matters most, and you wouldn't hesitate to be spontaneous and risk your heart. You wouldn't wait until tomorrow to do what you need to do today. The way you lived that month would be the way you wished you had lived your whole life.

If you knew you had one month to live, your life would be radically transformed. But why do we wait until we're diagnosed with cancer or we lose a loved one to accept this knowledge and allow it to free us? Don't we weant all that life has to offer? Don't we want to fulfill the purpose for which we were created? Wouldn't life be a lot more satisfying if we lived this way?

One of today's challenges it to quickly without thinking about it too much make a list of 5 things you would change about your life if you knew you only had a month to live. Choose one to begin changing today.