Two things happened recently. 

First, I graduated high school! *throws confetti* It was an amazing and bittersweet event. We had a ceremony at the capital, and it was beautiful, but also emotional. For the weeks after I lived in a weird state of romanticizing my past eleven years of schooling, and worrying about the future. I’ve started thinking about my next steps. What career do I want to pursue? Where will I live? Will I get married? On and on and on. After graduation, there is this building pressure to change, or reinvent yourself. To go into college fit, pretty, cool, and full of life.

Life. That word is something I latched on to. The idea of living life to the fullest is one that is pushed in modern day media a lot. So after college, what do you do? You have your life ahead of you. You have possibilities, stretching out for miles. 

Live life to the fullest, they say.

So you make lists of goals. For the summer, for the first semester of college- and the second. And then goals for all four years of college. Then a five year plan.

Live life to the fullest.

So I sit down and make a bucket list. Places I want to go, things I want to experience. I look at these pieces of paper and think if I accomplish these things- when I complete this list- I will be a happier, better person. 

I set off for college with a notebook full of goals and lists, and nothing else. I am going to live life to the fullest.

Then the second thing happened. Two weeks after graduation, my family and I left for a trip to Maine. I challenged myself, and left my computer at home- instead bringing a backpack full of books. I had one book with me, Death By Living by N. D. Wilson. I was halfway through the book, and struggling to finish it. But I wanted to check it off my list, so I sat down, the Maine coast in front of me, and started reading.

Nate Wilson writes about not living life to the fullest, but living life to die. Instead of living life to be poured into, to consume, to experience, to be filled up like a balloon- we live life to die. We start out full of life, and slowly we give it out- to our siblings, friends, parents, and then children and grandchildren. We give our life out to the world, and we die with no life left- because it was spent. All spent on other people. 

Nate Wilson writes that while other people are living life to the fullest, living life to be filled to bursting- they should be living life wringing every last drop out of themselves onto others.

Nate Wilson talks about this living to die: “Glory is sacrifice, glory is exhaustion, glory is having nothing left to give. Almost. It is death by living…He has something left. A few more ounces to give. A few more. And a few more. He is a reminder. To get my hands up.”

I finished that book in one sitting. It is amazing what one 185 page book can do when God uses it.

God did not make you so you could add things onto your life, He already gave you everything. He gave you a life. He just wants you to use it.

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Wilson, N. D. Death By Living. Thomas Nelson, 2013, pgs. 180-181