Seventeen Days

In seventeen days I go in for a surgery, an excisional biopsy of a couple of fibroadenomas in my breast. There I said it. I don't do a very good job of keeping secrets. I'm too much of an extrovert. I just spit the quiet part out loud much of the time. Although, the older I've gotten my filter is better. Really. I think I used to say it like it is(or how I thought it was), but then could feel the shock people experienced from my "honesty". Not so much anymore. OK, not as much anymore.

As I tend to be a realist, I realized that I have seventeen days to do all those things I'm suppose to do before I die. OK, I don't plan on dying, and I'm sure my surgeon would reassure me that it's more than likely not going to happen, and I'm probably going to freak my kids out by writing such a thing (and a few other people), but it's a possibility.

On the way back from Disney World, we watched, "The Bucket List" on the plane. I was due to go get a mammogram that week, in which two fibroadenomas were found in my left breast. 

After watching "The Bucket List," I didn't make a list, per se, but this kind of stuff has been mulling around in my head since at least then. 

So I'm making a list, sort of. Let me think.

I started by eating steak. Steak is a good start. 

I don't feel like I have to do an Ironman. I've done enough running here and there to satisfy that sort of desire.

I think I'll pick up my fiddle and play it. First I have to tune it. I guess it's back to, "Boil the Cabbages." Maybe they'll let me play at "Hardly Strictly Bluegrass" if they let people who can hardly play bluegrass on stage. 

I'm working on "Love Casserole" again, remember the book I said I was writing? This will add drama to the book, maybe a whole chapter. 

I went through this whole biopsy thing a few years ago, and then re accounted my life during my 39th year so, hmm. What is left on the list?

It's a list mostly about being of good character, remembering to be kind and loving to people. If only I could spend seventeen days really loving people. Showing them my gratitude. Telling them thank you for their kindnesses to me.

But my pride can get in the way of this. My hurt can get in the way of this. 

I believe that I am inherently sinful, lost without the sacrifice of Christ, in my place. So I know I can't meet the standard I wish to achieve. Doesn't that mean I shouldn't try? No way. 

So I'm to go around and be nice for seventeen days.  We'll I guess that simplifies it. But there must be more than that? 

Yes, living this life, which is a gift. Believing it's a gift from God, and that He is in control of the good and bad of it. 

So do I have seventeen days to preach? Perhaps. But perhaps it's to be seventeen days of listening. 

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