Happy New Year!!!

Tonight marks the end of 2007 and the beginning of a new year... another year... a fresh start. So what are my hopes for the new year?? I just hope to grow and become the woman God intended me to be and as I pondered this, I went back and read the speak that was given to us by one of our professors on graduation day. It spoke to my heart on graduation day and probabaly will for the rest of my life... so I wanted to share a portion of it with you.

"You're going to walk out of here this afternoon ith one thing that nobody else has -and that is your true self, your unique personality - you are the only person who has sole custody of your life, your unique potentional, and only you can fight your individual battle to live a real life, to become the most human you can be, to live the joyful, abundant life that Christ has offered to each of us. And my advice to each of you today - and anybody who has had me in class will know what I'm going tos ay - is "get a life." Get a real life, not the articial life, the rat race life, but get a real life..."Each of us needs to discover what makes him or her most joyful, most alive, for this is the true battle of life - to become fully human, and this is the battle we all can win because this is the battle that God wants us to win." As Jesus said, I have come that you might have life, and that you might have it more abundantly." God wants each of us to find this live, to live deliberately, to live consciously, as sons and daughter of God, and to achieve that joyful, abundant life......
Society, friends, graduate school, and maybe even family sometimes will constantly be pulling you away from the real life to the weatlhy life, the successful life, many the safe life, the life that will make them proud of you, the life our cultures tells you you're supposed to live. And there may be hardly any voices actually applauding you as you cosciously make that effort to become truly humand and open yourself up to every precious moment of every precious day that you live becoming the person God has created you to be. But...if you never truly learn to live in the present moment, never learn to savor the unique flavor of every day of your life (both the painful ones and the joyful ones), if you never really follow the voice of your joy and become that unique person you were created to become, you will miss out on the real life, and you will die having never lived - and living is too precious for that. There is something more sad than being diagnosed with a terminal illness and that is never living - only participating in the shadow our culture tells us is the good life... But this is how I want my resume to read, and I hope whenI come to die it will read this way. ----- I am a friend to my husband and a loving mother, and I have tried never to let my career or my self centeredness stand in the way of my being a good parent, a loving friend, or the human God wants me to become. I no longer consider myself the center of the universe. I have learned to pay attention toe ach moment and to each person who crosses my path. I show up for each day of my life - I really show up for each day of my life, I'm there; I try to listen to its voice and its uniqueness and enter fully into it. I have at times experienced deep joy and deep sorrow, and I have learned to be content in all circumstances realizing that the cup of life which God gives ut ot drink has both sorrow and sweetness in it. I have learned to laugh, to love, to cry, to play. And throughout the day to listen to the still, quiet voice of God, and I genuinely attempt to love God with all my heart, my mind, and my being, and I try to love my neighbor unconditionally. I have learned to treasure every moment I have with each person, to savor each sunrise and each sunset, adn to thoroughly immerse myself in the joy and wonder of living.
And I would urge each of you, unique, wonderful individuals, all of you - get a life. Get a real life, not a manic pursuit of your next promotion, the bigger paycheck, the larger house, the busier life. Do you think those things are going to matter if you get cancer? Do you think those things are going to matter when everything seems to have fallen out of your world? EAch time you look at your diploma, I want you to stop and remember that you are still a student and you always will be a student - still learning how to love God, to love others, to live fully. Always maintain a childlike amazement at and openness to life. Frederick Buechner once wrote that the worst sentence in the world is "I"m just killing time because time is all we have, and it's not time we are killing its our own lives we're killing. NEver get bored with life. Live your life. Live it fully. And remember that this life is the only one you get in this world, and you have no business taking it for granted or wating it in trivialities...it is so easy to exist instead of to live. I hope that I learned to live many years ago and am still learning each day. And I urge you to reasure your friends, your family, the breath of air you inahle every moment. And work at loving others and expressing that love to them. Oky, I want each ofy ou today to do this for me; write a letter to somebody and tell them you appreciate them, kiss your mother or your father or you grandparents, hug your friends. Tell those friends who have touched you how much they have meant to you. Tell that classroom member how much he or she has meant to you. TEll those people who have touched you "thank you". Get a life which you are generous to those around you." ..........
Professor Portfleet
Hope College Graduation 2007