I have a confession to make. I am not a fan of the songs, inspirational quotes, and Facebook posts that tell us to “live like you were dying.” I get the point. Time is short. You have to make the most of every moment. You never know when your number may be called. My reaction to this: It’s a terribly nerve-wracking way to live your life. This pressure to do everything we think we might ever want to do for every moment of the day. To tell everyone exactly how much they mean to us every single time we interact with them. I think if I tried to live this way I would fall asleep each night convinced I had fallen woefully short of the demands of this “live like you were dying” philosophy. For example, here are some things I did today: I cleaned my bathroom. I wrote a few emails. I made a grocery list. I stared into space for a few minutes while trying to focus on work. I spent a few minutes trading dumb jokes and harmless gossip with my sister. I watched TV.

Not exactly skydiving and poetry.

The fact is, most of us live a life marked by the ordinary. It’s how we choose to frame that ordinary, that matters. And we don’t need a death knell to achieve it. We just need a simple reminder that God loves us. That God is good. And that God chooses us and blesses us. The process of becoming who we’re meant to be is often gradual. We are each a work in progress. We look back on the ordinary moments and realize that our life is about something or it is not yet. But there’s still time. For the vast majority of us, there’s still time to make changes.

I’m not rejecting bold action in living out our faith. There will be those times when God calls us to take risks. To abruptly change course. To follow Him in a direction we never dreamed we could go. But most days we’re just chugging along the tracks of life. Doing our best. Imagine if every time you did something, a voice shouted at you: “But you could DIE tomorrow! Is that really what you want to be doing on your last day on earth?!?” My goodness. Who could hold up under that pressure? Imagine instead, that you heard a voice whispering to you:

“You are loved. You are called to love.”

This gentle reminder would reshape the way we see the world. The way we interact with others. The way we live.

There are many ways to live life to the fullest. And it’s true that some of our loved ones have been taken from this earth far too soon, while still others face very serious medical struggles. Our heart breaks with the unfairness of it all. We may never understand the reasons for it, and we wish we could take their place. But we must remember that God has given us our time here on earth for living. It’s ok to have regrets… as long as we share those regrets with God, release them, and keep moving forward, through each ordinary moment, listening for God’s voice teaching us and reminding us that love matters most of all.

It just might be a feeling even better than skydiving.