Enjoy what you have rather than desiring what you don’t have. Just dreaming about nice things is meaningless – like chasing the wind.
Ecclesiastes 6:9
I came that they may have life and have it abundantly.
John 10:10
Amy Low, a single mother two, is the managing director Emerson Collective. Emerson Collective is a nonprofit organization focused on education, immigration reform, the environment, media, journalism, and health. It was founded by billionaire philanthropist Laurene Powell Jobs, the widow of Steve Jobs the founder of Apple.
When Low was 48-years-old, she was diagnosed with Stage 4 colon cancer. As she travelled this dark and foreboding chapter in her life, she recorded her thoughts and published them in a memoir, released in June 2024, titled The Brave In-Between: Notes from the Last Room.
In her book Low grapples with the lessons learned in what she calls the “last room” – a room one enters when close to dying, yet still here. It’s a room we all will enter at some point, she writes, though few of us think about our mortality before then.
The lessons she’s learned there have taught her life can be both beautiful and awful, often at the same time. That’s different from what she learned growing up in church where she heard that God had a wonderful plan for her life and if she was faithful, things would turn out for the best. She now sees that message as more prosperity gospel than actual Bible teaching.
Low contends sometimes terrible things do happen, and not because we have a lack of faith but because life is hard. She wrote, “One of the things that I’ve learned over the past decade is that hardship has nothing to do with God’s faithfulness. God is, for me anyway, even more present through the hardship than through the mountaintops.”
From the many lessons that she learned living in the “last room,” one that I found most inspiring is to appreciate what she calls “mundane miracles” – small moments in life that are filled with meaning.
What would it be like to live this day as if we were in the last room, though not yet there as the last room is not in the foreseeable future? It would certainly change our perspective on life. We would still have, and should have, goals and aspirations, ambitions, a vision of the future we desire to journey to; though, living in the last room, these destinations wouldn’t overshadow the enjoyment of the moment.
It would transform our relationships. We would be more apt to forgive and long-standing grudges would evaporate. Our tempers would be modified, knowing how little anger ever accomplished. Criticizing another, constructive or not, would convert to understanding.
We would become aware of irreplaceable relationships, no longer being taken for granted. We would realize that love can’t wait for this afternoon.
I enjoy reading the comic Ziggy each morning, penned by Tom Wilson. Ziggy is the unfortunate but sympathetic protagonist, a diminutive, bald, barefoot, almost featureless character save for his large nose. He is drawn in just his shirt with no pants. In one particular episode Ziggy is sitting at a table, his chin resting on the palms of his hands. This thought comes to mind, “Memories are illustrations from the storybook of our life!!”
The last room is a room of memories. We should be cognitive that we are starting to fill that room this day. The room will be cluttered with regrets, though hopefully it will be decorated with blessings.
Indianapolis WRTV television anchor Tanya Spencer died from cancer on May 24, 2024 at the age of 53. Though before her death, she took to social media to share a poignant and thought-provoking warning about life. Spencer, whose real name is Tanya Sumner, left an impactful message on Facebook. She emphasized what she found to be most important in life, telling friends, family, and her loyal viewers that “Time. Good health. Those are our only true commodities. Our only true currencies that matter.”
Let us enjoy mundane miracles.