Love the Life you Live

“Guys, I just really love life right now” 
My roommate says this at least once a day and my floor mates and I are constantly teasing her for this but we share these feelings. We love our lives.

Dwelling on this season of Thanksgiving and shifting the focus towards the birth of the greatest gift as Christmas approaches, I wanted to share a few ways that I have loved in my life this semester:

  • Being involved in RHET. Planning dorm retreat, Chaos night, Service Auction (jumping in the Sem Pond after raising $1000 for our dorm partnership), and getting to know the friends on RHET has made this semester amazing
  • Throwing M&M’s at a professor 
  • Building community with the girls on 1st Veenstra (1AM talks in the hallway with cereal and peanut butter, floor outings with half-off appetizers, 11PM secret dance parties, movie watching in the basement, 8:15 breakfasts, waving to each other on the path)
  • Learning and growing in a new relationship
  • Classes and professors who invest into students
  • Visit from my immediate family and grandparents
  • Heethuis family opening up their home to me and becoming my second family
  • Warm weather in November
  • Coloring Christmas pictures with 8-year-olds
  • Breakfast with cousins (and sister cousins)

This list of loving life could go on.

Recently, I’ve been aware of how quickly this life can change. When life does change, we are often focused how it has changed for the worse. Back home, there have been violent deaths in my school community and in other nearby schools. In SPAUD 101, we have been learning about traumatic brain injuries and how that impacts the lives of the patient and their loved ones. Pastor Steve preached on what to prepare for your own funeral on Sunday.

The life that we have been gifted is a precious, temporary gift. Death is the end result of us all. Death is portrayed as sadness and often dampens the mood of any conversation. We would like to talk about what we can still accomplish instead of thinking about death and the life we have after death.

In death and life, Jesus is the constant throughout the changing times. These next few months include seasons of change as my roommate leaves for Honduras and classes come to an end. I’ll be 20 in less than 2 weeks. The first semester of my sophomore year ends in 16 days. Life is going by fast, and I’m only now learning to recognize the importance of each moment I’ve been given and rejoicing in the time I have.

Life is not going to be good at all times but that doesn’t mean we should stop loving it. We won’t always like our life but that doesn’t mean we should stop loving where God has called us to be for the time being.
Looking for ways to love your life more? I believe it begins with modeling yourself more and more after Jesus and following what He has laid out for us in this life. This is not easy to do in our broken world. To love life, I would encourage practicing vulnerability in opening up to the various experiences, opportunities, and friendships that ‘mysteriously’ come our way. This life only offers a glimpse of the life to come. 

John 10:10 -- “But I came to give life—life that is full and good.” 

Our lives are not our own. I need to remind myself that I belong to an unstoppable, unchanging, and powerful God. He is constant in a world that is changing and full of surprises.

May we love our Jesus more than we love our life.

Here's a picture of Ellie, another life-lover

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