Not Finished Loving You Yet

I've decided that sleeping is overrated. Or sleeping has decided it's overrated. I'm not sure which one is more true, but either way, I don't sleep much right now. It's a good night if I sleep six hours ... and I'm not talking about sleeping six hours straight through, but six hours all night. And the odd thing is, I rarely get tired even though I'm not sleeping nearly as much as I used to.

One night last weekend during a sleepless time, I turned on the TV (which I rarely do now) and stumbled across a medical drama dealing with two young people who were engaged to be married, and both had cancer. Before I knew it, I was totally engrossed in the show and ended up spending the next hour glued to the television. Though I fully expected a happy ending to resolve the storyline, the young man died during the surgery to remove the tumor in his brain. As the show ended, I sat on my couch weeping with the young woman who was left behind to face her own uncertain future without the man she loved so dearly ... without the one that she had planned to do life together with, whatever that life may have held.

It wasn't so much the fact that the young man died, though that was very sad, that touched me on such a deeply emotional level. It was one line ... one sentence ... one set of words that moved me to the very core of my being. Before the young man was taken to surgery, he was talking with the young woman who expressed her concern over what she would do if something were to happen to him. He looked deeply into her eyes and gently touched her face and said, "I'm not going anywhere because I'm not finished loving you yet."

Those words have permeated my mind and my heart for the last few days, seared themselves into my consciousness and caused me to think deeply about the people in my own life ... people whom I love so dearly ... people whom I'm not finished loving yet. My children ... my sister and brother ... my nieces and nephews and great nieces and nephews ... my friends. And for as much as I've thought about the people who are dear to me, I've thought even more about God over the last few days ... about how He continues to work in my life, molding and shaping and humbling and breaking me ... about how grateful I am that He isn't finished loving me yet.

Tonight's prayer? That I would have a heart filled with thanks and gratitude for each new day that God gives me ... that the people I love will know I love them ... that I won't waste one more second dwelling on things I can't change ... that I will live every moment that God gives me loving Him, praising Him, focusing on Him and Him alone. 

Because ... you see ... He's not finished loving me yet, and the truth is, He never will be.