Carpe Diem

It's been a rough week. I had one hellish day where I felt so trapped in my house and by my ever-fighting kids that I literally felt like I could not breathe. How I ever parented without the use of wine and a hot tub, I have no idea. I don't know what it was, but other people must've been feeling it too because several of my friends' Facebook statuses said things like, "Can't wait for this week to be over" or "Wants to fast-forward through this week."

It may have been that the Gators lost the SEC championship game. Ugh, that hurts to even write. There was heartache in the Gator Nation this week for sure, and I swear to gawd if anyone posts anything negative about my Timmy on here, your comment will be summarily deleted and your name added to my list of persona non grata. We're not kidding when we sing, "in all kinds of weather, we all stick together."

It also really hit me this week how young we are to already be losing our parents. I have three friends who are barely thirty, and one has lost both parents, another her dad, and just this week another lost her mom. I don't imagine there's ever an age at which it's easy to lose your parents, but thirty? My God, it's just not fair. Those parents who have passed will never see my friends' dreams achieved or their children born.

And yet we want to fast forward through our week. We want to skip our own lives. It scares me to think what I could miss if I keep closing my eyes to the present, as burdensome or painful as it might be, and jumping forward in my mind to the future. How many jumps do you get to take till there's no more future to jump into?

As I was in the middle of writing this I got a call from my doctor. I had had two skin tags removed a couple weeks ago. The one under my arm came back normal. The one on my back did not. She talked incoherently for about five or ten minutes about "dermal neurofibromas" and referrals for internal medicine. She mentioned that it wasn't cancer. What she didn't mention was that there is no cure.

I only had one, and it takes five for the doctors to be concerned, so I'm going to say a little prayer, breathe, and try to move on with my day because neurofibroma or not, there are babies to change and dishes to put away. I will wait for the call to set up my internal medicine appointment, and I will try against my nature to not freak out.

And in the meantime, I will live right here, in the present. I'm not going to mind-jump into the future because this is my life, right here, right now, even if it's scary as hell. Tim Tebow wore "John 16:33" on his eyeblack during this week's championship game. Jesus has just been telling his friends about what the future will hold when he goes to die, and he finishes by saying, "I have told you these things, so that in me you may have peace. In this world you will have trouble. But take heart! I have overcome the world."

And that does give me some peace. Jesus doesn't promise me that life will be comfortable and easy, but he promises that it will be victorious. He promises that I will get through the stifling days in the house and the frightening days in the doctor's office because he will be right there with me. And I don't want to skip through that, not for one second.