To live in the moment....

Hopefully this post wont be too philisopical or heavy, its just been one of those weeks for me. When you start to think about whats really important and grapple with whether you are actually doing what is right and what is real. My aunt is dying. She has been pretty sick for a long time with Emphysema and on oxygen 24/7 for years but she has always been the cat with 9 lives. We have joked about that with her, that when we got "the call" from my uncle that she was in the hospital again she would somehow get better when no one thought it was possible. This last visit though brought her to a crossroads. She needed surgery and if they put her on a venilator for the surgery they probably wouldnt be able to take her off. Did she want that? No, so the decision was made to put her on hospice and have her go home. She in many ways was more like a mother to me than an aunt, because at a young age she was my mother. My sister and I were staying with her when my mother was killed in an auto accident the week before my third birthday. She took my sister and I in when my father and his second wife divorced a few years later. She was someone that saw the YOU in everyone regardless of the skin they were in or what they had done. You were a person of worth and honor in her eyes because you WERE. We were all sweethearts in her eyes. So in thinking about Aunt Andi, and all is and has meant to me, I look at my own life and wonder...am I living my life truly in the moment? I know we all say that...to savor the moment, but do we really live like that? How would our words be different if we were really looking at our last conversation with one another? What things would we be doing? What thoughts would I be thinking? I'm starting to think that in order for me to truly live in the moment I need to live in the end. The end of my days that is. Instead of taking for granted another day, another week, another year...I need to shorten my perspective and think about this day, this hour, this person in front of me now and be real and LIVE in this moment with no regrets, no falsehoods, no shame, no judgement...only love, and humility and God's grace.