I watched Oprah’s final farewell yesterday. I have not watched her in a few years, but thanks to a bum thumb I got to watch it. I realized afterwards, I could have saved myself a lot of time through the years and just let her sum it up at the end. For all the nay sayers of Oprah, you are wrong. The last 25 years she showed people how to live out loud and live it as yourself. You can say people worshipped her, and that may be true, but yesterday she gave it all to God and I think her life has shown that. So, now I know for sure that I will never be invited to be a guest on her show. It’s a bit sad, all this genius unrecognized….But seriously, if there is one thing I have learned from Oprah, is that anything is possible in life.
I’ve been learning a lot about life these past few years. I know we all are as we grow, yadda , yadda, yadda but I seem to be paying attention more now than I ever have before. Maybe its the waves of mortality that keep splashing in my face that keep reminding me of how little time we truly have here. In the last few years I’ve had relatives, old friends, and new friends, and family of friends and friends of friends move on. I’ve sent my condolences, prayers and tears to people. I have been to a wake and discovered that some people are just really special. I’ve laid family to rest, that I have often wondered why they made the choices in their lives that they did, could they not see the damage they caused over the generations? And I have had to say my good byes to a family member, that out of those ashes, rose like a phoenix in the eyes of God and I could only hope to be as warm and caring and freely loving as her. Today, I was privileged to be amongst family and friends to honor a giant. He was big in all ways, physically, spiritually, big in heart and kindness. He was a whirlwind, not a force of nature, but a force of life. I have my memories, sporadic as our meetings were, but always they stayed with me. One of his close friends read the words “our purpose in life is to serve and love one another”. He is so right and Scott did that so well. The only funeral I did not want to leave. As I drove home I had to ask myself, if I were to die today, would they say it was a life cut short, or a life lived fully and well? Scott has set an incredibly high standard. He will continue to be an inspiration to me to live more fully.
These kind of things make you reflect on Heaven and what it is really like, who will be there when I get there and will I know all of life’s answers when I do. I do know, that this past Sunday, I am assured that my daughter India will be there. It seems natural for re-birth to happen at the time of death, it happens all the time. Although baptism is merely a public acknowledgment of your acceptance of God, it’s also a symbol of re-birth. India had the privilege of having her dad baptizing her. There are only a few things that I ever hope for my children, one is to accept Christ and have relationship with Him. and the other is to love fully and purposefully. I wish my kids would have known Scott better.
The Plagiarist 