Isn't This the Way I'm Supposed to Live?

This morning my father and I ate breakfast together, an unusual occurrence. We eat lots of other meals together, but in our family breakfast is a haphazard get-it-when-you-feel-hungry affair. We only have one working shower at the moment, so if we ate breakfast together we'd have to eat it in our pajamas or in the middle of the morning! Anyway, my father and I ate breakfast together. (He ate bread and cheese and I ate pancakes and syrup.) Anyway ...

As we ate, my father told me about a woman who has just died, September 2007.

In 2000 this woman was diagnosed with an aggressive form of breast cancer and 'given' six month to live by her doctor and surgeon. She was married and had young children. She heard what her doctor and surgeon told her, but she refused to accept it and just lie down to wait to die. She had chemotherapy and surgery and she ... lived. She lived the full six months her doctor and surgeon 'gave' her and then she lived another six years - so that seven years after her doctor and surgeon 'gave' her six months, she died, less than six months after completing a cycle event in which she pedalled across the United States of America from coast to coast.

You see, this woman didn't just refuse to accept her doctor's and surgeon's prognoses, she poured her heart and soul into living ... living life to the full and then some. As well as spending precious time with her husband and children, she ran and cycled and swam for charity, collecting money through sponsorship programs. She raised peoples' awareness of breast cancer and funded cancer research. I guess she did more living in the six months her doctors and surgeons gave her - and the seven years God gave her - than a lot of people do in six years or seventy years.

Listening to my father tell this unknown woman's story, I felt something stir within me and thought, 'Isn't this the way I'm supposed to live?' I don't know whether this woman was a Christian or not ... or whether she acknowledged God in her life and her suffering ... or whether she thought about whether her cancer was God's will and decided to live that situation 'to the hilt'. But her story makes me think of Jim Elliot, who said:

"Wherever you are, be all there. Live to the hilt every situation you believe to be the will of God."

Each and every one of us is like this woman, in that every day and every week and every year we have is a gift from God. Shouldn't each and every one of us acknowledge God's will in our lives and decide to live each situation 'to the hilt'? Since none of us knows how many moments and how many years God has given us, shouldn't we pour our hearts and souls into living each moment and each year to the full? Shouldn't we read this woman's story and be inspired by her example of living life 'to the hilt' ... be inspired to the extent of following her example and living life to the full ... and then some?

Imagine what would happen ... how much power and potential for God would be unleashed ... if each and every one of us decided to live every situation we believed to be the will of God 'to the hilt' and lived life to the full ... and then some! Imagine ... the passion, the enthusiasm, the joy ... that would be contagious and would change the world ...

Isn't this the way I'm supposed to live?