Today, on I read a book and it changed my life or at least I had a moment in which I felt a change and you know, we’ll see if it actually lasts, but please could it?:

This passage from Kate Bowler’s Everything Happens for a Reason and other Lives I’ve Loved (a memoir by a woman who’s in the slow process of dying from cancer at age 35):

“I think I believed I was living in the center, but I rarely let my feet rest on solid ground, rooting me in the present. I my eyes shifted to look for that thing just beyond, the next deadline, the next hurdle, the next plan. That second baby is going to need his or her own room, so let’s talk about renovations. On long walks I forever roped (my husband) into my favorite topic: The next thing. How could we improve our lives? What could we do next?…If I were to invent a sin to describe what that was — for how I lived — I would not say it was simply that I didn’t stop to smell the roses. It was the sin of arrogance, of becoming impervious to life itself. I failed to love what was present and decided to love what was possible, instead.”

PLEASE LORD, MAY I LOVE WHAT IS PRESENT, MAY I STOP THE PLANNING AND FUTURE THINKING, AS MUCH AS IT COMFORTS ME.