A stop on the road of life - accomplishment

With three kids, a business, a spouse with a business, a house, a yard, and a very close comprehensive family, my time is at a premium. This means Iâ??m as a rule in succession as fast as I can to keep up with everythingâ?"and every now and then flaw miserably in that endeavor. A short time ago I was immovable amid two major obligations, forceful from one to the other, and late again.

In my mind I was ticking off all that had to be done when I got home: make supper, give the kids a bath, help with homework, align the house, lay out clothes for the morning, pay the bills, reconcile the bank statementsâ?¦ when abruptly the call for somebody in front of me put on his blinker and veered over to the empty lane beside us. I hit the brakes and then realized why he had stopped. A funeral procession.

Instantly while my first attention was, â??Oh, no! I donâ??t have time for this!â?? I, too pulled to the side of the road, curved off my radio and blocked just as the policeman and the hearse passed. I looked clear of them to see how many cars with light there were and realized I was going to be there for a while.

Turns out, I had no idea how long â??a whileâ?? would be. As the chain was in fact advent about a back into a corner up the road, I couldnâ??t in fact see the whole thing, which could by a long shot have been 200 cars or more. Nonetheless, as I sat there in silence, perspective began to fall about me. Here we on this side of the road were, active our lives, forceful in the fast lane to get what we had to get done, outward to have no time as it was, but when we desired toâ?"out of courtesy or obligationâ?"we stopped.

Life blocked so that we could all take a jiffy to acknowledge not only the grief of one family, but so that we could accept that we, too, will one day be at the head of that funeral procession.

See, death and 24-hours, are the two great equalizers in this lifetime. We each have 24-hours to live our lives each day. You cannot buy more time. You cannot will more time. You cannot even strong-arm more time. You and the wino on the avenue have accurately the same total of hours in ever day. The only discrepancy is in how you decide to use that time. However, here is a sobering thoughtâ?"you and the maximum physician on the earth also have the same digit of hours in each day. He has used his brilliantly. How have you used yours?

Death is our other most equalizer. No be relevant who you are, where you are from, who you know, or how much money you have, one day you, too, will be laid out and most important that procession. The distrust is, how long will your demonstration be?

As I watched this personâ??s procession, it became clear how this anyone had preferred to use those 24-hours a day that God had granted. Well. Very, very well indeed. The cars just kept appearance and kept coming, rounding that bend and lining up until there was a mile of them, and they were still coming.

For one flash that day I closed on my bothered trek because of life to certainly be concerned about where Iâ??m going on this road we call life, what it all means, and whether or not Iâ??m head in the command that I want to end up. Truth is, it was well worth the stop.

Copyright, Staci Stallings, 2003

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