Lesson #2: Five Seconds After You Die...

The intro to this series is here.

Lesson #1 is here.

When 2011 began, I started reading two books, Crazy Love by Francis Chan and Radical by David Platt.  Although I liked both books very much, I sheepishly admit that I didn't finish either one.  Yet.  Maybe I will in the coming year!  However, I'm fairly certain that in one of those books, I read something like this:  Five seconds after you die, it will not matter...  Then fill in the blank with whatever.  It will not matter what car you drove.  It will not matter the color of paint on your walls.  It will not matter how high your laundry was piled.  It will not matter what your bank account balance was.  And so on and so forth.  I wish I could find that quote; but although I have looked through the books, I can't put my finger on it.  But you get the idea.  Simple enough, right?

Simple, yes, but also profound...wise...true...and possibly life-changing.  It changed me this year.  Here's how...

Like most other "normal" women in my circumstances (30-something, married with children, homeowner, middle-class, American woman), I discovered that a significant part of my time and attention was devoted to worldly thoughts and pursuits.  I don't mean worldly in the sense of blatantly sinful and contrary to God's Word; I mean it in the sense of temporal, earthly, materialistic.  I mean things like, "What color should we paint the living room?" and "How much would it cost to get new hardware for our kitchen cabinets?" and "I need to start looking for matching comforters for Tobin's room (since he'll eventually share the room with Shav)." and "If I yank those shrubs out of the flowerbed, what should I replace them with?" and "I sure would love a new light fixture for the hallway." and "How should I best organize my recipes?" and "Isn't it about time to redo our blacktop driveway?"  None of these are bad things, in and of themselves; but--the big question comes--five seconds after I die, will they matter?

Although I'm only 35, I think I hit a mid-life crisis this year.  Incidentally, if this is mid-life, I guess I'll die at 70, rather than the 98 I was shooting for (my great-grandmother's lifespan).  ;-)  But on a serious note, I found myself so dissatisfied with the fleeting things of this earth and, consequently, so eager to give my life to something more meaningful than paint colors, light fixtures, and flower seeds.  Even while I cleaned my house and did laundry and cooked meals and helped in the garden and did all the routine tasks a wife, mother, and homemaker does, I found myself longing for greater impact, greater service, greater sacrifice, a greater pouring-out of myself for no other cause than the mission of Jesus Christ.  "Is my highest goal this summer to see how many quarts of home-grown tomatoes I can can?" I would ask myself.  "Does God really want me to devote myself to learning how to make homemade laundry detergent?  Should my striving be to learn how to bake bread?  ISN'T THERE MORE TO LIFE THAN THIS???"

As with so many things in life, there is a good side and a bad side to all of this angst.  The negative of it was that it challenged my contentment at a deep heart level.  Is it enough for me to pour out myself for my little family?  Are the monotonous, but very necessary, tasks such as laundry, cooking, cleaning, etc. actually acts of worship?  Can I offer them up to God?  Will I trust that, in His own way and timing, He'll lead me if there are other avenues in which He would have me serve?  My soul did a fair amount of searching about purpose and fulfillment; and if I am disciplined enough, I'd like to write more about that at some future time.

But let me get to the good part.  The simple question of "five seconds after I die, will it matter" helped me to shift my mindset from a selfish, materialistic one to a more other-centered, heavenly-minded one.  My eyes were opened more than ever before to the immense amount of needs--physical and spiritual--around the world, and suddenly the things I thought were important were much less so.  I realized how blessed I was to even have a home in which to live, even if the walls never got repainted.  I saw how short life was and how unimportant it was to waste time worrying about weeds in my flowerbed when I could focus instead on people.  Even the old couches that, until 2011 began, I was so eager to get rid of, were transformed in my eyes, from something I couldn't wait to throw away into something that I was grateful for and wasn't in a hurry to change.  In fact, the thought of spending several hundred dollars to replace those couches was not appealing to me in the least.  In 2010, I would have leaped at the chance to upgrade our couches.  In 2011, I was much more reluctant to do so--not because of any sentimental attachment to the couches, but only because of a major shift in mindset.  When children are literally starving to death, when people are living and dying never having heard of Jesus, when families even right here in our town are struggling along without hope, who cares what my couches look like???

Now, about those couches, you might remember that, nearly a month ago, I mentioned that we did get new (well, used) couches that we bought from a friend.  I'm happy about these new-to-us couches.  I like them very much.  I'm grateful for them.  I'm thrilled to have them.  I'm also thrilled that we were able to put our old couches in the free section of Craigslist and have someone come pick them up, rather than us just hauling them away to the dump.  So yes, our new couches are wonderful.

But they're just couches.  

Five seconds after I die, they won't matter.  However, for now, while I'm still alive, I'll enjoy the couches, I'll fall asleep on them ;-), I'll sit on them often to read with my children, I'll welcome others into my home to relax on them and share our hearts together in comfort, I'll thank God for them, I'll watch my boys jump on them, and I'll admire the life that is lived on them and the people that are nurtured through them.  But I'll also remember that they're just couches.

I feel my thoughts rambling on and becoming less coherent as the night advances, so let me try to stop and sum up by saying this:  asking myself the simple question, "Five seconds after I die, will it matter?" has benefited me greatly this year by changing my perspective on what really matters and by helping me to--quickly and routinely--evaluate my actions and my thoughts.  What do I dream about?  What do I plan for?  What do I use my resources to accomplish?  Home decorating?  Landscaping?  Making my little nest "perfect"?  Being an incredible gardener/homemaker/cook?  Winning recognition for the outstanding job I'm doing in our homeschool?  Building my blog platform and making money from it?  No!  No!  And again, no!

Don't get me wrong: none of those things are inherently wrong; and as a matter of fact, those homemaking roles are God-given and valuable!  But I hereby confess how lopsided I had become and how selfish and focused on this life my thinking was.  The proper balance needed to be restored in my mind and soul, and 2011 saw good strides made in this area.  May it continue in 2012!

My heart's deepest desire, which burned more brightly this year than previously, is this:  to make an everlasting difference, to affect the eternal destiny of those around me.  Because five seconds after I die, that's all that will matter.