Our Arrogance Is We Think We Got Time

Hola 👋🏼 Danni here.

September was one of the most brutal months I have been through in the last five years. To say it was challenging and sad simultaneously would be an understatement.

I lost two relatives within the last month: my aunt and my little sister.

The news of both gave me a one-two punch to the gut and had me reevaluating life on a level I’ve never done before.

One after another. GONE.

Yes, theoretically, I know that people die. We don’t live here on earth forever. I’ve been to six funerals within my family in the last two years. But this month, not being able to see or talk with my little sister again pushed me to a place in my life I didn’t think I could go.

Nobody tells you how to receive bad news that something has happened.

Nobody tells you how to sit in a hospital for five days straight and know that your little sister is never coming back to this life, never coming back to her room in my house, never driving her car that sits in my garage, never seeing her walk down the stairs in a fly outfit (that she never thought was so fly), never hearing her laugh again at the Cowboys losing a game.

Nobody tells you how to be angry, but within reason because you are still expected to be the strongest person you know.

Nobody tells you that after all the family and friends are gone and the meal trains have ended, people return to their normal lives, and you have to sit in the silence and sadness every day.

Nobody tells you that you can pray endlessly and consistently for miracles of life and restoration, but sometimes, that specific miracle you pray for isn’t in your life’s cards. (But God forbid we genuinely hear this in a sermon).

There are no guides on how to be. No amount of words, books, or prayers could ever prepare me for this past month.

What I have come to realize just a few days removed from burying my 25-year-old sister is that time is never on our side, and it is our fault we think it is.

We really think we have tomorrow, or next week, or next year. But do we really?

I’ll do it tomorrow.

We will take a vacation next year.

Girls trip to Spain next Summer.

Too busy, let’s plan it for next month.

I need more money, more time, more space, more, more, more.

I’m waiting for an answer to my prayer.

Dang! We really think we have time. But we really don’t.

September has shown me that life can be cut short unexpectedly, and there is nothing I can do to rewind to a previous day or week.

It is arrogant (and scary) to think that we have hours, days, weeks, months, or years when we really don’t. We are on borrowed time. We are on borrowed talent. The people around us are on loan to us. One day, the balance will come due, and we will have to pay up.

The balance on my sister’s life came due far sooner than I expected. The time we could have spent together, the plans we had coming up, the holidays, the new year, the new job, the first apartment, the future — it will all be different now.

But in every situation, there is something to be learned or reconsidered. And, for me, it is a renewed sense of conviction that today is better than any day in the future to do the things and be with the people I have been putting off.

Whatever it is that you’ve been putting off, do it today.

The business you’re supposed to start, do it today.

The workshop you’re supposed to be promoting, do it today.

The person you’re supposed to ask out on a date, do it today.

The family vacation you’re supposed to take, do it today.

The thing you need to do, do it today.

The class you’re supposed to finish, do it today.

The book you’re supposed to read, read it today.

It feels scary, but it is genuinely grounding to know that life isn’t ours to determine the outcome; it is ours to live.

Our #1 responsibility is to LIVE — abundantly, fully, freely.

I am starting to think in terms of minutes and hours a bit more rather than days and weeks or months and years.

When it hits you, as it hit me, that the time we think we have can be so rudely snatched away in a matter of seconds, you will start to focus on the things and people that truly matter and what you’re doing to ensure your balance at the end of your time on earth is zero.

Zero, not because the breath in your lungs escapes you. But, zero, because you did EVERYTHING with the time, talent, energy, and goodwill you had been given.

I know a lot of things. But I will never know the time that is left on my clock. Neither will you.

May we all intentionally spend the time we’ve been given as well as we spend our cash.

That’s it, that’s all!

Rooting for you!

Danni

P.S. I postponed my podcast workshop in September and genuinely felt like not picking it up again this year. But the conviction that time is loaned to me has propelled me to reschedule it. So the “How to Take Your Podcast from 0 to 50K Downloads with Less Than 50 Episodes“ workshop is happening October 12 at 11 AM CST. Join me here.