As a recovering “Type A” personality, it has taken me six plus decades, one bout with breast cancer, one brain aneurysm, one divorce and the arrival of my Medicare card to break my habit of measuring a successful day by how many things I can check off my To Do list.
Here, approaching the seventh decade of life at a pace I don’t like at all, I feel like I have finally figured out a lot of things about what successful living really is.
As the former owner and publisher of a Christian lifestyle magazine, a midlife career I confess I stumbled into, (apologies to my mother and Mrs. Shuttleworth who taught me better than allowing hanging prepositions) I had been a disciplined list maker and goal setter my entire life. I so remember the day I got over my bulldozing determined strategy to accomplish the list come hell or high water.
I got to my office early one morning with a list a mile long. I had several stories to write and a deadline that was close. I also had a hair color appointment later that day, and if you know anything about Southern women you know our hair appointments are at the top of our priority list! Lord, help us. Nobody wants to die with gray roots. I was sure I could get my writing done and make my one o’clock appointment that would magically erase those unpleasant reality reminders of aging facts I so dislike.
I had barely turned on my computer when I heard my front door open and a familiar voice call my name. It was my former pastor, now retired, who had baptized my babies, buried my parents, and performed the marriage rites for both my son and daughter. He was, at that time, 85 years old and slow in every way. He told me about a website he had had a friend build for him. It would pop up if someone googled, “The Secret of Happiness.” It had gotten 60,000 hits in the past year. He sat down and “visited” for more than an hour trying to convince me to write an article for his blog on a certain “politically incorrect” topic. I could not bring myself to tell him that the people he wants to reach do not search for that topic on Google. Neither do they read Christian magazines.
But in the middle of my hopefully disguised frustration, I felt like the Holy Spirit was reminding me to give him my full attention and to remember how very much he had given to me and to my family over the past 40 years. There was no question that my “list” was second to the time and attention due Bill.
That encounter brought to my mind a long forgotten principle that people are way more important than the “to do” list.
Not long after Bill’s visit I got a call on my cell phone from my mentor, a woman I loved as a second mother. I was heavy into a week of deadlines, and my husband Charles and I were trying to get out of town the very next day for a grandchild’s birthday party. I saw Jan’s number on my caller ID, and I almost did not answer thinking I would call her on Monday. But something made me pick up the phone.
It was the last time I got to talk to her, and before we hung up she said, “I love you real good.” I was able to tell her I loved her, too. She died of a massive heart attack three days later. I miss her every single day, but oh how sweet it is that I have the memory of that last conversation.
The take away here is to live fully in the moment. Appreciate relationships. Express your love and gratitude every single day. Life is fragile. It can turn on a dime. I think the biggest challenge facing us in this enlightened age of technology, social media, and virtual relationships is to remember what real looks like, to recall what matters and to give grace and love to all those human beings whose lives intersect ours along the day in and day out journey that is life.
Marilyn Tinnin is the former owner and editor of Mississippi Christian Living magazine. An Indianola native, Tinnin is the daughter of Marie Hemphill, who graced the pages of The E-T for years with her column, Generally Speaking. Tinnin has been gracious enough to contribute to her hometown paper under her mother’s moniker.
