For Granted

There’s something about music that seems to reach me in a way that nothing else can. I was driving to work this morning when K-Love played Jason Gray’s song “Good to be Alive.” The lyrics touched me in a way that I haven’t been touched in a long time.

Here are the verses that got to me:

I won’t take it for granted

I won’t waste another second

All I want is to give you

A life well lived, to say “thank you.”

I wanna live like there’s no tomorrow,

Love like I’m on borrowed time,

It’s good to be, it’s good to be alive.

I started thinking about my life, and I came to a sad realization: I’ve taken it for granted. What’s worse is that I’ve been doing it for a long time. I feel as though I’ve been living on the defensive ever since my ex-wife left me five years ago. It’s almost as if I’ve become nothing more than a survivor who is unwilling to truly feel or let people get close to me.

When I look at what I’ve been given, I should be grateful. The Lord gave me a wife who will never leave me. She loves me very much, and she will never give up on me. I’ve become a successful writer who now owns and operates a website covering my favorite team. I’ve been published on Yahoo! Sports, Apocalypse MMA and several other websites. Finally, I’ve finished the licensure process. I’m now a substitute teacher who has had the privilege of working with some wonderful students.

However, despite all of these personal and professional successes, I realize that I’m not really living life. There’s not a lot of joy in my heart; there’s not a lot of happiness. I simply live every day expecting it to be just as blah as the day before, and it’s all my fault.

The truth is I became so bent on trying to make up for past professional failures that I lost sight of what’s really important. God gave me a wonderful gift with Jenn, but I have continually pushed her away when I should have let her in. I’ve taken the greatest personal gift God could give me (outside of salvation), and I’ve built a wall between us. I didn’t want to risk feeling the same pain that I felt five years ago, so I went on the defensive, and I didn’t even realize it.

Moreover, I’ve built that same wall around my heart with God and the church. I believe Jesus Christ is my Lord and Savior, but for whatever reason, I’ve still kept a safe distance. I’ve put my heart into work instead of growing closer to my brothers and sisters at church. In short, I stopped feeling; I stopped living.

I only get one chance at this life. I love the Lord, and I want to please him. The time has come for me to stop living in fear of being hurt by others. The Bible tells us that "God has not given us a spirit of fear, but of power and of love and of a sound mind" (2 Timothy 1:7 NKJV). Fear is not of God.

I don’t want to waste any more time. I could die of a heart attack tomorrow, and I don’t want to leave this world without serving God as best I could. I don’t want to take His gifts for granted. No matter how we want to frame it, we are on borrowed time, and I should be living every day like it’s my last on this earth. That’s my prayer for today – to live like there’s no tomorrow.