The Most Important Legacy
I missed writing yesterday! It wasn’t intentional. The day had a way of getting away. I did my morning practices, ran to Aldi for fresh chicken breasts + peaches for a delicious Crockpot meal, and read + puttered around the house. Once a month I host a wonderful, engaged group of women to discuss a few chapters of a Sally Clarkson book, and so my early afternoon was spent rereading those chapters (13 and 14 of Own Your Life) and taking some notes. Then it was time for swim team, dinner, and tidying before the women came for an evening on my back porch, filled with conversation, reflection, and Meyer lemon cookies.
In this particular book, Sally says, “If I could give you only one encouragement in this book, it would be to measure your life by how well you have loved." In the end, the definition of a successful life would be how well we obeyed the greatest commandments to love God and love others. Last night we discussed how love is a choice, “a commitment that demands your time, attention, grace, and humility”, and that love matures over time through “a process of growth, practice, and exercise”. It is a good reminder to remember what the essential priorities are for this short life and to acknowledge that we don’t naturally love well. We look out for our own interests, which according to Philippians 2 isn’t wrong, but we must also look out for the interests of others. This is what it means to be like Jesus. Humility, service, attention, care, sacrifice, generosity. There is a communal, Triune-reflective life available to us that we must exercise. And in exercising, we go grow stronger, more fit, with greater capacity to love and give.
Loving well is the best and most profound act of life. ~ Sally Clarkson
It’s encouraging to sit around a table with like-minded women, drinking in life, exhortation, challenge, courage. We need these spaces that shelter, give us safety to question, contemplate, reveal, wonder, and be our truest selves. It’s from these round table discussions that we remember the vision and ideals of how we desire life to be: focused, wise, good, beautiful, true. But these ideas must not stay in the realms of discussion but be translated into practice. We move from the mountaintops back into the reality of a lifestyle often worked out in the valley. We wake up this morning to obstinate children, forgetful husbands, and our own pride. This is where we live out loving well. These hidden mornings seem so unimportant. Practicing love begins here with doing dishes, get dinner prepared, smiling, asking good questions, guiding with patience. This is where our lives are built. This is where our legacy grows.
May we practice, choice by choice, loving well. We pray for God’s Spirit to do that work in us, knowing that this isn’t something we can produce or perform. He wills and works this in us. We surrender.
With love,
Aimee