A Space for What’s Important

The rumble of thunder vibrated through the walls. It was faint at first, and I stopped to listen. Was that really thunder? Yes, a rumble and then a crack of lightening. A storm was coming, and fast.

And then the rain came. I heard it on the roof. The skies let go and the rain came down, wet torrents of drops and wind, all rolled together. It was a refreshing Colorado rain. Cool and steady.

I continued with my tasks, opening windows and straightening away the clutter of the day.

The house vibrated again in the wake of yet another rumble. And the lightening followed. It flashed and danced in the sky. I could see it outside my kitchen window, gnarled flashes of light between tree branches and fallen limbs.

Up the stairs I went to open my bedroom window. I wanted to let that cool air in.

Pushing open the window, I noticed my neighbor across the street. He had set a metal chair up in his garage and was sitting and enjoying the rain.

I stopped.

I saw him smile. His hands were resting gently on his thighs and his face was peaceful. He was scanning the horizon. I saw his face move quietly back and forth, like he couldn’t get enough of that moment.

My breath caught and my throat constricted. I moved quickly away from the window. I didn’t want him to think I was staring.

But I was, of course. His presence in the garage was not something to be missed, or taken lightly.

My neighbor is dying and doesn’t know how much longer he has left to live.

“It’s my own fault,” he told me recently, “I smoked for fifty years.”

Seeing my dying neighbor sitting in a chair in his garage during the storm moved me, and I felt a shift inside. Me, who is forever in motion, doing and checking off lists and cleaning and straightening.

But in that moment, I paused.

I stopped.

He was teaching me something, and I didn’t want to miss it.

It was something so very critical: gratitude and worth, priorities and grounding; a lesson in filling our space with what’s truly important and worthy of our time.

While I was busily racing around the house, my neighbor was soaking in the beauty of that sweet and precious moment. He took time…because his were so very precious, he took each moment and filled it with what was most important.

Perhaps that is the real lesson for us all: to live each moment and cherish it as if it were the most important moment of all.

Because it is, of course.

We think we have all this time…so we put off until…what? We have more money? More time? Until we lose that five pounds? Or find that perfect job?

Why?

The moment of the storm was no less precious to me just because I’m not in the throes of battling cancer.

No, that moment was just as important to me and just as critical. And if I hadn’t seen my neighbor, I would have passed right over it. I wouldn’t have recognized the lesson.

So today, in honor of him, I’m starting and ending my day in gratitude, and I’m spending my day in gratitude.

I’m going to love each and every moment as if it were my last; so that when I do arrive at the end, I will not have missed one blessed thing.

Call to Action: What is one thing that you can do today that you’ve been putting off because of fear?