What will linger behind me? What fragrance will be left of my life? These are sobering questions I have to ask myself a lot. I am continually challenged by God to review all I do in light of eternity. In light of what will be left behind. I don't want tons of degrees or pieces of paper on my walls, or titles after my name in my obituary, these are not important to me. I do want one thing to be evident, that I loved the Lord, my God with all my heart and all my soul and with all my mind. This is the struggle of my life. I always wonder how is the next word out of my mouth or thought in my head, going to further the Kingdom. I have to say, I feel like I fail at this all the time. I wrestle with decisions about how to spend my time, what impact certain things will have on my children and what am I doing to move my marriage forward. I am consistently taking a deep breath with God, trusting Him in the choice I just made regarding some kind of consequence for one of my kids or a decision regarding a project in Zambia. None more important than the other.
This past summer, we made the decision to help renovate a widows home in Lusaka. Her name was Grace. We teetered many times about the decision because of thinking we might not have the money or time to accomplish this project. It was one of those deep breaths with God. A, "OK, lets just do it!" decision. My husband and son had spent a whole day before the team came in getting things kinda ready. The door ordered, the roofing found and paid for, the guy to measure the door picked up and brought to the widows home to measure, then brought back, etc. Then the guys on the team came in and pulled off a leaky roof, replaced the rotten beams, put on a new roof, re-measured and fixed the already measured door and put that in and also had the chance to include a couple Zambians from the area to help and feel productive! Grace was given the new keys to her new door and that was that.
A couple weeks ago, I was sitting in a leadership conference, trying to learn how to be a better leader (tough stuff!), and I got a FB message from Majory in Zambia. Grace had died that morning. I was quite stunned at first and just needed to process. I felt like I needed to give Grace a moment of remembrance in the midst of the thousands of people at this conference, none of which knew her or cared about her house or were sad that she had just died. I sat by myself outside (freezing!) for a little bit and realized we almost didn't do that project. We could have missed out on being Jesus to her, even if she only had her house leak free and safe for a few months. We never know what tomorrow is going to bring. Let us not miss opportunities to do something eternal and leave a lasting fragrance in someones life. BUT let the fragrance be of Jesus and not of ourselves. Let it be that we were nothing, and HE was everything. Let it linger that God was the most important thing in my life....my desire and my everyday struggle....is it yours?
