pay careful attention to your life

a summer's inventory

Be very careful, then, how you live—not as unwise but as wise, making the most of every opportunity, because the days are evil. Ephesians 5:15

Summertime doesn’t seem the most appropriate time for a life inventory, or any sort of inventory of the heart. The new year or even the fall, with all the change and nostalgia of beginning the school year (though most of us are long past that), seems more fitting to take an account of our lives and how we live them.

Summertime is for light-heartedness and easy, lazy days lounging in the sun, preferably by some body of water, sipping something delicious and reading only the beachiest of beach reads.

And yet, right here, smack dab in the middle of summer upon the ending of June and start of July, I ask you to consider your life.

“How we spend our days is, of course, how we spend our lives…” Annie Dillard

In some ways, the middle of summer might be the best metaphor for the way we live in our current culture. Summer is busy and full and so are our lives. Summer can feel hurried and frantic, a stream of commitments until our entire calendars feel full. And, so our lives.

It’s a season that makes us feel in a blur. Or perhaps that we are in fact a blur, going to and fro, from one place to another, one trip to another, barely catching a moment for any real reflection, slowness, quiet.

So in the middle of your summer, however it finds you, I invite you to consider carefully how you live your life. I invite you to take a inventory of sorts.

Recently, I stood at the stove stirring dinner with Elliott on my hip and Anderson chasing Ada round the couch. The day was a hum drum kind of day. Nothing too extraordinary. There was laughter but also the duties and difficulties of life: bills to pay, relational conflict, chores to attend to.

As I stood there, the thought passed my mind that one day these type of days, with little ones at my feet and a whole life ahead of them and me, will be a distant memory. Time already has passed quicker than I can imagine and I am sure it will not slow down. The question is: what kind of life do I want to have lived when the time has passed?

I ask you the same question. Consider your the life you want to live. Consider your life now. Consider what you are pursuing, the character you are growing, the story you are a part of. You can use the questions below as a guide. Take however much time you have.

• What good things are around you? What growth have you seen in yourself and others (in your marriage, children, family, friendships, co-workers)? What prayers have been answered?

• What worries you?

• If you have an iPhone, there is a place you can find a breakdown of your usage on the phone (you spent 20 minutes on text messages, 30 on Internet, etc.). If you were to look at your typical day, what would the “breakdown” look like? How would you like it to look?

• What brings you life? Rest? What invites you and stirs your heart toward life with God?

• What wearies your heart? What makes you less able to hear, sense, notice your life with God and the people he has put in your life?

• What circumstances are you facing right now? What responsibilities and roles are you beholden to you right now? What, if anything, could you let go of? Say no to? What, if anything, do you need to step into? Say yes to?

• What type of life do you want to have lived and person do you want to be in your eighties? Are you becoming that sort of person who has that sort of life?

These are heavy questions but one that might do us well to ask ourselves with some level of frequency. If we aren’t careful to watch how we live, we can end up living in a way that is not aligned with our values. We could end up living in a way that we don’t want to live.

The Amplified version of this passage provides a beautiful translation of Ephesians 5:15:

Therefore see that you walk carefully [living life with honor, purpose, and courage; shunning those who tolerate and enable evil], not as the unwise, but as wise [sensible, intelligent, discerning people]…

May we live our lives with honor, purpose, and courage, dear friends. May the way we spend our days add up to a life lived wholeheartedly for God and all that is good, right, and beautiful.