It’s The People

When I peeked into Harold’s room, I saw Daniel and Gloria, along with three or four family members, including a couple I knew to be Harold’s other daughters. . . .

I turned to Harold’s bed and saw that he was lying very still, drawing in deep breaths, spaced at wide intervals. I had seen men and women at this phase of the end of life many times. When they reach their last moments, they slip in and out of consciousness and even while awake, in and out of lucidity.

I turned to Gloria. “How’s your dad doing?” I asked.

“He’s hanging on, but I don’t think he has much longer,” she said.

—HEAVEN IS FOR REAL, 118

Todd

After surviving something serious, the smaller, everyday stuff that used to be upsetting or annoying just doesn’t get as much of your time or attention as it once did. At least that’s how it has worked for Sonja and me. And there’s another thing too: your sense of value changes.

I know people whose main goal in life is to have a great car or a big house or the newest red or green tractor. (Yeah, I live in Nebraska.) But I’m guessing a lot of those people haven’t stood by a hospital bedside, screaming at God not to take their child.

After that kind of experience, you tend to forget about the little things—and you realize life isn’t about things anyway. To correct a well-known political insider’s slogan from a few presidential campaigns ago, “It’s the people, stupid!”

Wise people learn this lesson and live this truth before they reach the end of their life. When you “get” what’s important, you start investing more of yourself in the people in your life: the ones you love and the ones who love you back.

Life is short. Sometimes too short.

But however old you are when you get to the end of your life, maybe you’ll be like my friend Harold, described in the excerpt above, who was lying in a nursing home bed, suspended between this life and the next. At that point, you won’t be asking for the plaques you earned, the trophies you won, the stuff you collected. What’s going to matter then is the people you love. That’s what you’ll want around you as you head off into eternity.

If you don’t know it now, you’ll know it then: it’s the people in your life who matter.

Who do you need to find and give a hug to today or maybe send a “thinking of you” note or e-mail?

A new command I give you: Love one another. As I have loved you, so you must love one another.

—John 13:34 NIV