My husband, Corey, has this friend….a friend who is really more of acquaintance, or an email buddy.  Corey has known him for years but their main interaction was simply forwarding emails to each other.  The gentleman lives just 2 blocks away from us so when we take family walks, we always stop by if he’s outside and chit-chat for a bit.  Corey and I even went to dinner one evening with he and his girlfriend, but that was really the extent of the relationship.

This neighbor of ours… friend, acquaintance, email pal…whatever you’d like to title him…passed away suddenly just a few weeks ago.  He had a massive heart attack on a Saturday morning and that was it.  Corey received an email from his live-in girlfriend stating very plainly that Dan had passed away unexpectedly that very morning.  She didn’t know most of his friends so all she could do to let people know what had happened was to send out a mass email to all his contacts.  As you can imagine it was quite shocking to find out through an email, but more disturbing has been the aftermath of the terrible news.

Corey’s in box has gone from several forwarded emails a day from this gentleman to radio silence.  He quite figuratively fell off the face of the earth in a blink of an eye.  I drive by his street several times a day and see the “For Sale” sign in his front yard, and it still blows my mind that one minute he was here, enjoying his roaring 60’s, sending out jokes to tons of email buddies, and then poof….he was gone!  I feel terrible for his family’s loss, as losing anyone unexpectedly is traumatic.  But what really keeps me awake at night has been the idea of….What did Dan leave unfinished the day before his death?  What tasks at work did he save for “tomorrow”?  What relationships did he leave unattended with the thought that he could always make that phone call “tomorrow”?  What loose ends around his home did he make the choice to do “tomorrow”?

Now I know for Dan, none of the earthly life he left behind matters to him anymore.  If he was a believer, as I will assume he was, he passed from this life into glorious eternity in Heaven.  Life here on earth instantly became of zero relevance.  But what about the things, jobs, chores, and most importantly the people he left behind?  To those individuals, what he left “unfinished” may haunt them for the rest of their lives.

This is where my thoughts are tonight.  Morbid as it may seem, I can’t stop thinking about what would happen if I just didn’t wake up tomorrow morning.  What unfinished business did I leave behind?  I know for me…on my way up to those pearly gates…it will not matter the second I take my last breath here on Earth and open my eyes to breath in Eternity with the Good Lord in Heaven.  But what I leave behind…what I leave unfinished will matter to those left to carry on in my place.  My loved ones, my friends….they will know what I didn’t finish.  They will know what I failed to get done in my time here on Earth.

And with these thoughts I am left with an overwhelming desire to just have more time…I want more time to do so many things.  There is so much to do and to see.  There is so much I want to accomplish yet with my life.  I feel as though I have barely scratched the surface of what’s out there for me to do.    So with all the prayers I send up God’s way…I think most of what I truly desire is more time.

More time with my children to watch them grow up.  More time to see them walk down the aisle and graduate from college.  I want more time to snuggle up with them on Sunday mornings watching cartoons….and more time to make Christmas cut out cookies and decorate the tree each year.  I want time for more family vacations to Disney World and more summers at the local pool.  I want more time to gingerly walk them through their first heartbreaks and the birth of their first child.  I want to be around long enough to see that what I did as a mother paid off ten-fold in the form of well rounded, thoughtful, caring, empathetic, spiritually mature, adults who know how to love more than just themselves….who know that life is so much bigger than their own little world and it all matters…it all matters.

I want more time with my husband.  I want to stand by his side as we watch our children grow up.  I want more time to see his hair turn grey and precious wrinkles form on his forehead.   I want more time to crawl into bed with him each night and fall asleep on his chest.  I want more time to dance in the dark with him holding me close once the kids are fast asleep.  I want to travel around the country with him in an RV after retirement just like we always talk about doing.  I want to live long enough to see our golden anniversary, and I want more time to live out our dreams together…just me and him against the world.

I want more time to enjoy my family.  More time with my parents to see to it that their senior years are all they deserve.  I need to show them that I can be all they dreamed of and more.  I want more time to spoil my niece and watch my brothers’ develop into amazing young men.  I want to see them get married, settle down, and have lots of cousins for my kids to play with someday.

I want more time with dear friends and their families.  I want to enjoy cookouts and birthday parties, family reunions with 5 kinds of potato salad and my utterly insane extended family, and the annual round robin we try to accomplish every Christmas day.

I want more time to develop personally, emotionally, and spiritually.  I know God has a greater purpose for my life than the meager things I have done thus far so I want more time to live out His Will.  I want more time to make Him proud of who I am and what I have done with my life.  I want to make a difference in this world.  I want to leave my mark on the people I meet….a mark on their hearts.

I want to be around to see my face develop wrinkles in the form of laugh lines…lines that tell the world….I’ve led a long, happy, joyous life!

So now, I have to ask…..What did you leave “unfinished” today?