Do you know that bargaining?  The kind you do with God?  The kind you don’t really talk about during the daylight?  The kind that happens after hours, in the dark, when the stuff is hitting the fan?

The middle of the night, crisis burning, repeated requests kind of petitioning?

The “not that one thing.  Just not that one thing.”

(That one thing being your health or your marriage or your children or your job or your parents or your home or your ability or your talent.  That one thing.  Whatever your one thing might be right at the moment.)

And then that one thing happens.

That one thing that you begged, “Please, not this one thing.”

And do you ever feel like you jinxed it?

Like, if you think about it even, then it’s going to happen?

And there’s this heavy crushing fear that can literally threaten to strangle my next breath – the fear of that one thing being so looming and heavy.

Because (almost) All The Things have already been taken.

The stability.  The potential.  The marriage.  Who I thought I was and what I thought I had.

And there only remains just a handful,

just this tiny list,

of What Is Left To Lose.

Some days that fear is just too scary.

Because although the handful of What Matters Most is not vast – it is wildly significant in my heart.

And I tell you the truth, it requires every ounce of what I love about Jesus and what I believe about God and what I profess to be true about eternity, to pry open my clenched up fist every single morning of my life and begin the day with a barely opened hand, sharing What Matters Most with Who Matters Most.

That is the hardest work I do every hour.

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