I saw this a couple of months ago on NOTESONTHEWAY‘s Instagram account and it made my heart sing. I thought, “This is what I want my life to be, this is the way I want to love people.” I want the love of Christ to so fill me that it spills out into everyone around me, bringing peace and comfort and a feeling of home. I want to be a sanctuary for hurting, frightened, and threatened people. As a Christians, the divine meets the mundane in each of us who belong to Him, and I want my life to give proof to that. I want people to get a tiny peek at just how much God loves them through me. I want to be a safe place, a place of comfort and joy, a place of understanding and kindness. I want love and joy and peace and patience and kindness and gentleness and self-control to define me, all the days of my life. I want my life to speak God’s truth in a way that words often fail to do.

Even though I fall short of these goals so often (too often), I keep trying. At the end of my days, this I how I want to be remembered, as a person who loved people well and was a safe place for people when the world was not; someone joyful in adversity, patient in frustration, kind and gentle even when it was not warranted, self-controlled even when the world was in disarray. To me, these would be the marks of a well-lived life, and I hope I’m making progress every day.