Karaoke Tuesday: "This Is Your Life" by Switchfoot

What's on your iPod?
Mine is packed with everything from Christian contemporary to Rock... Techno to Broadway musicals... 70's to 2000's... some grunge... some heavy metal... some bubblegum pop. I know all of the words to Metalica's Nothing Else Matters, Paula Abdul's Cold-Hearted Snake AND the entire High School Musical soundtrack... And I've found in writing this blog, that you never know where you'll find Divine inspiration!

This week's song is This Is Your Life by Switchfoot. It asks a simple question:

This is your life. Are you who you want to be?

WOW... that actually makes me feel... uncomfortable...

It's not asking "Are you WHERE you want to be?" "Where" would imply some status or accomplishment that I could easily shrug off with a careless, "Yes, I want to publish a book one day, but I've got time, right?"-kind of answer. Or "Sure... I might go back to teaching.. Who knows?"

Asking me "WHO I want to be" is an entirely different matter altogether...

Who DO I want to be, anyway?
I want to be honest.
I want to be funny - I love to make people laugh.
I want to be free of worrying about what people think of me.
I want to be a good mother... no... a GREAT mother.
I want to be a loving wife and best friend to my husband.
I want to be caring. I want to think of others ahead of myself.
I want to do right by my family.
I want to be thought of as "Christian."

Am I all of those things? Wellllllll... sometimes? Some days, I'm lucky if I achieve even half that! And although each day I start fresh trying to be those things, I know that my own pride, or arrogance, or preoccupation with my own activites often gets in the way of just WHO I want to be.

And each "failed" day builds up on me... weighing me down with it's garbage. That pile of regrets, and apologies, and guilt just builds higher and higher until it knocks me off of the path I've been trying to follow.

Switchfoot reminds us that "Yesterday is dead and over" - implying an alternative: to let go of the baggage and garbage that clouds our minds and hearts. That's easier sung about than actually done, isn't it?! But it just so happens that there IS a way to dump that garbage out of our souls:

Come to me, all you who are weary and burdened,
and I will give you rest. ~Matthew 11:28

God knows that often we either come running to him shrieking "HELLLLPP MEEEE!" or come crawling to him crying in our exhaustion and despair. Fortunately, He scoops us right up and offers us comfort from the terrors or troubles that have knocked us down. With his ever-renewing Band-Aids of "forgiveness," He picks us back up and walks with us through our bumpy journey of life.
But he can't do our LIVING for us.
We are free to make our own decisions and our own mistakes. And it's those mistakes that sometimes have us looking back over our life wondering "What-in-the-Hades happened to me?! This is my life?!?! Are you serious?!" It is at that point where we must grab on to that free will God has provided us, and make some choices that put us back onto the path God intended for us to follow.
This IS your life: Are you who you want to be?
And if not, what are you going to do about it?
♥Mags

The Lyrics
Song: This Is Your Life
Artist: Switchfoot
Album: The Beautiful Letdown
Hear it on Last.FM!