To Life, To Laughter, and to the Pink Panthers...

I decided that I love acting! I haven’t been in a play for about 7-8 years. It’s been awhile. I was sooooo nervous to try out for the Pink Panther, but I am so glad I did (Thanks to Holly and Abe for convincing me to try out!). I still get nervous when I think about having people watch me in the play, but the practices are so much fun. I just sit there and laugh…probably too much, because sometimes my character is supposed to be afraid…and I am laughing (oops!!). I need to practice not laughing!! That is something that is very hard for me.

I was telling my co-workers that being in this play has been a good stress reliever, because no matter what else is going on at work, or in life in general…I know that in the evening I will spend a good 3 hours laughing, and I forget about everything else in the world! I love it! I know that nobody reads this anyway…but this is my plug for the Pink Panther…COME AND SEE IT!!! It is Nov. 5-8th at the P.W. Enns Centennial Concert Hall. Get tickets at the City office!

On a more serious note…lately I’ve been thinking a lot about my mortality. I attended an all-day workshop last week by Dr. David Kuhl who wrote the book, “What Dying People Want”. It is an excellent book…and Dr. Kuhl is a very good presenter. I did a book report on that book for one of my classes in University, so I really wanted to attend this workshop. I was NOT disappointed! I learned A LOT! But one thing that stood out to me was when we talked about our life time line. One exercise we did, was draw a time line of our life with our birth date on one end and “death” on the other end. We were to put an “x” where we thought we were right now on that time line. Like this:

Birth----------------X--------------------------------------Death

Then we were supposed to list 5 things that have influenced our lives to make us who we are today and list 5 things we wanted to do before we die. Well, that was right up my alley…I have way more than 5 things I want to do, most of them traveling goals…and the major one would be to do missions/Mercy Ships.

Then we were supposed to revise our time line as if we had received news that we were going to die in 6 months. Like this:

Birth-----------------------------------------------X----Death (Apr 28/10)

Then we were supposed to answer those same questions again with this time line in mind. I realized that most of my goals are long term. There is no way I could do all of those things in 6 months. I could still travel if I wanted to…but I realized that more importantly I would want to spend time with my family and friends…especially my nieces and nephew. I would want to have lots of “auntie days” (as the kids call them). It made me sad to think that if I would die in 6 months that my youngest niece would never remember me, and rest of them would have very few memories of me.

I feel like everything lately has been reminding me about how short and unpredictable life really is. I keep randomly reading articles about sick/dying people (i.e. AIDS/HIV issues in Africa, mortality rate of infants in Haiti, and others). Why am I supposed to be reminded of this over and over again? It breaks my heart to think about the suffering that is happening all over the world...and in our own "backyard". I want to do something, but I feel so helpless. I was thinking about all these things a couple of days ago and this is what I wrote in my journal:

“I know that I can’t save every sick baby.
I can’t rescue every abandoned child.
I can’t comfort every grieving mother and father.
I can’t cure every disease.
I can’t take away everyone’s pain.
But I would like to do something.
My hope is that in everything I do, I can give people Hope.
And in that Hope, I hope that I can point them to Someone greater who wipes away every tear, carries every burden, calms every storm, and is the Father to the fatherless, the Ultimate Healer, and the source of the greatest Love anyone will ever know.”

That sums up my feelings right now.