Taken for Granted

A few days ago, our best friend got news that her thirty something son who lives with his wife and kids in another country dropped dead.  What!!??  Shocking!!!  

This guy was incredibly fit, always taking marathon hikes and bike rides!  He died on a long bike ride.  He’s too young for something like that to happen.  Isn’t he??  I’m in a state of shock, just trying to process that news.  I can’t imagine what our friend must be going through!  

Well, actually, I can get a little hint by remembering back 12 years when my first wife suddenly, unexpectedly, dropped dead less than a minute after we’d had a conversation.  I was suddenly catapulted into a different reality, from which it took months gradually to return, to a whole different life than I’d been living in when it happened.  

Trying to feel with my friend now has reminded me again that we can never assume anything about this physical plane of life.  

Every moment is a unique and special gift, to be appreciated deeply right then!  From waking up to a new day to greeting my beloved spouse and our dogs, to looking out at beautiful trees and flowers and birds in our vitally alive surroundings, to being surprised by my daughter stopping by for a moment, to sitting down to a delicious lunch I brought home from a neighborhood fast food place, right through the day’s calls, conversations, and meetings and its opportunities to write and think and smile and move—every moment is unique and special. 

I can not assume anything in this world.  I can only KNOW in the spiritual dimension not the physical.  

And what I know for sure in spiritual reality somehow shows up in physical life, even though it all comes as a series of beautiful gifts that I must accept, never thinking I can control them. 

I pause to be aware and grateful, even while the tears trickle from my heart, as I feel with and for my friend.  Life is strange—and beautiful.  All begins and ends in love.  I open and offer thanks for all of it.