Before It's Too Late

We take so many things for granted, don’t we? The air we breathe. The clothes we wear. The food in our pantries. The things that we take for granted the most are the two most precious things we have. They are time and people. We tend to believe that we have all the time in the world. For the ones that we love, we assume that they know how we feel about them. Yet, for the loved ones that we are estranged from, we believe that we will reconcile someday but just not today.

The problem is that someday sometimes never comes.

We get so bogged down with life’s activities that we simply don’t take the time to appreciate the people we have in our lives. As a pastor, I have conducted funerals. I always hear people comment on the good aspects of the person who has died. I hear them talk about how much they will miss them, how much they love them, and
how they can’t believe they are gone.

But did they take the time to make sure the deceased person knew that when they were alive?

Sure, there are times they talk about a negative aspect of the person, but most of the time it is done jokingly, memorially. Mostly, they talk about the good things. As a matter of fact, I have known a few people whom everyone spoke so highly of that I had to wonder who was lying in the casket because I knew they could not have been talking about the same person. Death has a way of causing us to remember the good and overlook the bad.

Why don’t we tell people how we feel about them while they are alive to appreciate the sentiments?

I’ve been thinking about my father who died in 2003 at the age of 53. He and I didn’t have the greatest of relationships. As a teen and young adult, I often felt like he didn’t want me or love me. Before he died, I had a rare conversation with him. During this conversation, he asked me if I knew that he was proud of me. I responded that I didn’t know that (and I wasn’t sure at that moment if he really meant it). He replied that he was. The problem is that it didn’t mean much because I was hurting and angry with him for not being there for me as I was growing up. 20 years later, it means a lot and I wish I could hear him say it again.

I remember seeing him in the casket and wondering who he was. I heard people talking about him but I didn’t know the man they knew. I had wanted to, but it didn’t work out that way. I didn’t cry until I saw some pictures they had of him when I was a kid, before the age of 14 when we become estranged. I broke down because that was the man I knew and that was the man I missed.

During my junior high years, he was a police officer in the small town I grew up in. This was before he walked out of my life. I was so proud of him. He used to take me to our school’s basketball games. He was working security for them. It made me feel like a big dog because of what he represented and what he did.

Even though he’s been gone for 20 years I have such a strong desire to just talk to him. As I said earlier, we didn’t have the greatest relationship from the time I was 14 onward. It still affects me today as a grown man with children of my own. It’s left a void in my soul.

I usually write posts that have to do with theological themes but I wanted to encourage everyone to realize that life is short. But, as I think about it, restoration of family is a theological theme because the heart of God is for reconciliation.

Once someone is gone, they are gone. There is no going back. There are no more chances at working things out. On this side of eternity, death is final.

Death is coming for us all. It’s a hard reality to accept when it hits you personally. The older I get the more real it becomes.

I would like to encourage you to take the time to acknowledge those in your life whom you care about. Let them know you love them and let them know that you care. Let them know that they are important to you.

Nice things said at a funeral are just that. . .nice. They may help us grieve but they do nothing for the one lying in the casket. Why wait until it’s too late? Why not tell
someone today that you love them? Right now, think of someone you haven’t talked to in a while. Send them a text, a message, or better yet, pick up the phone to actually call them and hear their voice. It could very well make someone’s day.

If things are not as they should be between you and someone, why not make it right? You may have to lay aside your need to be right in order to value the relationship. Once one of you dies, there’s no fixing it. Unresolved issues usually leaves a hole in the heart of the one still living.

Several years ago, when I was living in Shawnee, Oklahoma, a friend of mine who lived in Tennessee was traveling through my area on his way back from the Grand Canyon. He didn’t have to stop to see me but he did. We spent about two hours catching up, talking about our kids and about God. He made my day by stopping in. He still had about eight hours to go before he got home but those two hours meant the world to me because it said that I meant something to him. To be remembered is a very valuable sentiment.

Tell the people around you how much they mean to you. Tell them that you love them. Tell them how special they are to you! Spend time with them before it’s too late.