I spend a lot of time thinking about heaven. If this seems weird to you, well I don't know what to say. I just do. When I was a kid, I thought about it as this mysterious, Care Bear land type of place. As I got older and more of the people I loved started going there, my thoughts of heaven were just curious mostly.
What are they doing up there all the time? If heaven is infinite, do they even know the difference from one day to the next? Does it ever get dark?
Sometimes my thoughts of heaven are really comforting during an otherwise stress-filled event in daily life. I'll be going through something and think to myself "Would this matter if I were in heaven?" The answer is usually no. And this helps me not get so bent out of shape about it.
Sometimes I find myself measuring every little thing...like we so often do when it comes to life under the magnified lens of social media. Do I look okay? How many "likes" did that post get? What are my Google Analytics for this website or that?
I can't say with certainty exactly what heaven is like, but I feel like I can most definitely, certainly say that there are no Google Analytics up there. I don't think there's room in heaven for anything that makes us feel less than or like we don't measure up. And I'm positive there's nothing in heaven that determines our value by how many hits we have or what our bounce rate might be.
I read a really good post recently about how to figure out what your purpose is in life. It really makes it seem so simple...and it is. Our purpose is not about what we can acquire or who we impress. It's not about how many people visited our blog or how quickly we accomplished a certain set list of life goals (10 Things to Accomplish in your 20s...ugh).
There's nothing wrong with wanting to accomplish things or setting goals. And there's nothing wrong with wanting to lower your bounce rate (I do!). But don't let these things define you.
2014 got off to a rocky start at my house...the southern beau has pneumonia and I've been battling the flu. We don't live together so we can't do much except bemoan our symptoms on the phone. One day I was feeling particularly low and decided to listen to an audio recording from a friend of mine who is a pastor. It encouraged me so much and goes along with the post about finding your purpose too (It's called Peter Pan if you have trouble with the link).
I hope your year is going well. And I hope you know that if it didn't start out with a big ol' glorious bang like you'd hoped it would, there's always a new day and a new chance to get things going in the right direction. And the alternative is heaven. So we're doing alright.
