This marks the first day of the last 30 days I have to live.

July 10, 2009.

Everyday it seems like a fog of life decisions and situations and chores can be all we wake up to. And sometimes I’m so full of fear, bad habits or procrastination that I wince at choices that will open me up to pain or loss – choices that may cost me something.

So often I wait. I sit and stew in a situation when I should act.

I wait for Genie Jesus to come along and magically engineer my circumstances to where my feet are transported to that spacious and sure footing the Psalms talks about.

This week would be an excellent week for me to get my act together, clear my head and focus on things that matter, because I am picking up my daughter and her sister in Kansas City. They are spending a week with my family and I for the first time.

Almost nine years ago, I placed my three-day-old newborn for adoption with a wonderful family I chose from out of state.

(I was young, in a bad relationship, had no education and no way to support a child.)

I was totally unprepared for how gut retching that choice would be. For three years I stayed mostly in a fog of grief over a motherhood no one really credited (including myself) as legitimate.

(Well, there were a few. But for the most part if you want to create a socially awkward moment in a crowded room, throw out the fact you’re a birth mother and watch all the little people scatter.)

Overtime, the adoption grew into a fully open one. I love each member of my daughter’s adoptive family and cherish the closeness that I have with them.

So anyway I’m in the bathroom getting ready this morning (this is often where my most profound thoughts of the day take place), and I’m thinking about the haunting voicemail I had at 5:30 a.m. from my beloved kid brother, Matt, sobbing because his girlfriend of two years just dumped him OUT OF THE BLUE after spending some week at some pansy-ass self discovery thing in California where she met a guy that she thinks she needs to pursue. I want to kick her ass. Very Jesus like, right?

Then my mind starts rolling through the possibilities of how this situation can be used to create opportunity to win Matt back to the truth that God is real. He is LOVE. He is NOT Joel Olsteen. He is not religion. He is not some rigid non-educated world view or Ned Flanderish lifestyle that prefers bumper stickers warning of unmanned vehicles in case of rapture instead of profound logic and reason that makes sense of the universe.

Then I started to dwell on the fact my best friend is in West Africa for two weeks at an orphanage and I MISS HER and need her counsel right now so much. My lovely, God-given crutch of friendship that I’m such a weenie without…

Then I started to think of my other beautiful friend who is going through a messy custody battle with an ex-husband who’s also on my list of “peoples behinds I would kick if I wasn’t a Jesus follower.”

Then I started to think about this relationship I had swung back and forth into over the last 10 months that looked great on paper (go to church, gainfully employed) and should have added up, but it didn't. At all. And we both knew it.

So much energy expended…round holes…square pegs…my life’s pastime…

Then I started to think about my daughter’s family and her parents and how they are separated and may very well end up divorced.

What does that mean? What does it mean God, when you sacrifice your sanity? Your motherhood? When you sacrifice your right to see your own child so she can have a family and it all falls apart anyway?

That’s when the thought came to me of what would I do if I had to filter everything through the reality I only had 30 days to live?

While I was getting to ready this morning, I remembered a sermon Craig Groschel socked to my gut a couple of years ago titled “30 days to live.”

He interviewed people who were dying, and asked them what their regrets were? How are they spending their time? What would they do differently with their family?

I began to challenge myself in my head. “How would you treat this relationship if you only had 30 days to live? How much more time would you waste on that situation or this situation?

Would I finally divorce fear, my lifelong companion, and more deeply embrace God’s truth and faithfulness that He came to give us life abundant?

But my thoughts were interrupted by a call from my mom, “Did you get a call from Uncle Steve’s mom?” she asked.

“No.”

“Well, I guess they forgot their cell phones on their way to the VA. They were getting another CAT scan. It must be bad for Lenore to leave a message and say she can’t get a hold of me so she’s going to call you.”

“What do you think it is?” I asked.

“Well you know he’s been really sick. He can barely eat anymore and they’ve stopped the chemo. I don’t think he’s honestly going to live much longer.”

At this point I just stood there shocked by what I was hearing. Shocked for my uncle, and shocked because I had just been completely marinating in my own mortality, and my mom calls me with this news.

I have to be honest, my Uncle and I are not that close. I don’t want to be one of those people who put themselves on display during a tragedy for the notoriety that comes from being near to it.

My Uncle is a hard man to know and an even harder man to love. At 50-something he was never married, no children, and he hasn’t had a job in more than five years.

The vitality of his life, the meaning of it, is something that has long been lost for him.

When he would join us for a holiday, he would spend the entire day watching TV never talking to anyone.

The only thing that would engage him was to throw out something provocative like, “Yea, I do NOT think Democrats are the spawn of Satan…” And he would swivel the chair around, and go rapid fire on the great evils and stupidity of liberals, Democrats, credit card companies, preachers, foreigners, Muslims, college kids, Californians, the news media and the weasely French…till all in the room would suddenly remember something urgent in the other room and scatter.

But we really do love him. And he does have his sweet moments. They’ve grown with frequency the more sick that he has gotten. So have his desire to “do this” or “go there when I get better.”

Today his doctor recommended to his 80-something year old mother that she get hospice.

So I don’t know why anyone would want to read about this.

But I’ve made the decision today to try and sincerely live my life the next 30 days like there all I’ve got.

Now this doesn’t mean that I’m going to quit work, let my car get repossessed and do nothing but eat chocolate and spend time with my family.

But I am going to make a conscious decision that with every circumstance I encounter, be it a person in need, a weighty decision, a string that needs cutting, a leap of faith that needs taking…I’m going to try and filter that decision/circumstance through, “What would I do if I only had 30 days to live?”

We shall see what comes of it…