How Will You Finish?

Eight years ago on Easter Sunday, Ray and I drove into Thomaston, GA, a small town of about 10,000 people. We came here to try to save my life. I was 56 and a cardiologist said I wouldn't see 60. Just months before I had been introduced to a ministry of Pleasant Valley Church called For My Life. It had already wrought tremendous changes in my life, but I knew if I stayed in Jacksonville, I would just go back to the way I was. So I left my mother, my children and my grandchildren to begin anew. My emotions felt like they were in a high speed blender. I had a lot of guilt for leaving everyone.
We left our furniture on the truck and crashed on the carpet of the living room before getting up to go to church. When church began, Ray began to cry. He was extremely pale. He told me he was going to the car. It really scared me. I dug in my purse for a nitroglycerin patch and went to the parking lot to find him. All that was going through my mind was, "Oh, great, I have killed my husband trying to save my own life."
Tears were streaming down his face when I found him. So naturally I started crying, too. I said, "Honey, what's wrong? Is it your heart?"
His eyes widened.
"NO! I just was overcome, because I have never seen you so happy."
He had laid down everything to save my life, because he loves me unconditionally.
A pastor once told me, "Diane, there is no reason your marriage should work, because of your backgrounds. But Ray has never given up on you. Still as much as Ray loves you, God loves you even more. You wouldn't believe it. So He sent you Ray so you could see love in action."
Eight years a miracle began and there have been times that I have not treated it in the reverence it deserves, Every day is indeed a miracle. I have already had about 1360 more days than the surgeon said I would.
How many have I fully lived?
Jesus came that we might have live abundantly.
The house we live in is a piece of that abundance. Although we had owned investment property, we had never owned a personal home until we moved here. It isn't fancy, but it is a place of refuge and hospitality
So many pieces of life's puzzle have been found here. I have even picked up some wrong pieces and tried to shove them in, but they didn't fit. Yet the picture is still not complete.
I purpose to live my life with gratitude and in His abundance. I want to finish well.