“Starting the Conversation”

Difficult, yes….but transforming

Tomorrow I will speak at Sturgeon Bay’s United Methodist Church. It will be a day long program designed to “get the conversation started” about life and death matters. That is so scary to all of us, it makes us squirm. Yet I have found that facing this very uncomfortable topic brings such a surge of life to us, that I am passionate about getting it started!

What is it that makes us squirm? Certainly we all know that we begin and end our lives in this world, yet that reality is something we tuck away below the busy lives we engage ourselves in. When friends or family face a serious medical diagnosis, we squirm again. And again. Hopefully tomorrow, there will be a room filled with those that are ready to begin this conversation. The conversation that we must first have with our owns selves; the plans we have for our final years legally, financially, and medically. The funeral we want held to honor our lives. The words we want to share with our family, the persons that we want to appoint to speak for us if we are unable. And the choices for medical decisions that we want upheld during that time.

These are hard questions to face within ourselves. We must face our mortality, visualize our final days. But as we do, that squirming lessens until it finally stops. Our energy is free to be spent in life, and living. In being more fully alive and vibrant. And the plans are made, so that each of us can be assured that our own wishes are known. And that our family will be freed from squirming had they been asked to make decisions that they are not prepared to make.