‍As a Christian, I hold firmly to living life in the light of eternity. This is the one life I have to live…on this earth…that’s the important caveat. I have eternity in glory as my true future. Having an eternal mindset gives us the ability to sacrifice for others and pour ourselves out. An eternal perspective keeps us from clinging to this earth so tightly that we attempt to make it heaven. This protects us from being surprised by wars, disasters, and suffering. An eternal perspective equips us with the ability to be selfless, focused on others, and encourages discipline.

I don’t believe in a “YOLO” mentality. I don’t believe in living each day as if it is your last. No one can function that way. If I knew it was my last day on earth, I certainly wouldn’t spend it doing chores, paying bills, or even decorating my home. I wouldn’t even travel. I would spend it with the people I love. If you only live once, then skip paying your taxes, and go hug everyone one last time. The natural end of these philosophies isn’t more love but more selfishness, a self-focused mentality, and a lack of discipline. YOLO and living each day as your last are the opposite of what a believer is to think and do. But what about the idea of living in the moment? Is that theologically opposed to living in light of eternity? Are they juxtaposed? The opposite sides of the same coin? I hear a lot of believers say, and I’ve said it myself, that I need to live in the moment more. Is living in the moment the same as YOLO? Is there any truth to living in the moment? Does an eternal perspective make us useless here on earth? Does it make us live with our heads in the clouds?

I have been consciously and sub-consciously wrestling with this tension for several years now. I want to cultivate an eternal perspective, but I also want to see this moment that God has given me. Tomorrow isn’t promised. Flowers bloom and die sometimes in a matter of hours. One day your husband is fine and the next he’s a shell of the man he was. Today a chicken is sitting in your lap while you take a break and tomorrow, she’s dead. Finite life is filled with finite moments. On the other hand, I don’t want to live so in the moment that my faith weakens because I’m living by sight, my selfishness increases because I’m hoarding moments, my grip on this world becomes knuckle–tight, and I become bitter because moments are often taken from us. Someday, I will be out of the fight and on to eternity—which my finite brain, especially pre-coffee, can’t even really grasp. I don’t want to live so in the moment that I forget this part of my life is short, sanctifying, a battle, and a testing ground. I don’t want to live so in the moment that I forget that this isn’t all there is.

Having countless doctors tell me—some curiously and some completely freaking out—that my husband shouldn’t be alive brought this jostling between living in the moment and eternity to the forefront of my thoughts. It is no longer some theological brainteaser to toy with while I mop floors or do dishes. It is absolutely necessary that I settle this in my heart. In fact, one of the countless ways the Lord has used my husband’s health emergency is to make me realize I wasn’t living with as much of an eye on eternity as I should have been. My contentment level with my little corner of the world, my healing after a ton of church trauma, even my studying of homemaking, had distracted me from eternity. (Those are all good gifts from the Lord, but sometimes good gifts have to be removed so we don’t suffer from sanctification stagnation.) I just didn’t give it enough thought. My head was full of this earth. Forced to look up from flowers, chickens, books, and domestic arts, to prayerfully wrestling with the reality of eternity, I found the helpful tension between my earthly humanity and my heavenly eternity.

Side Note: Finding the right tension point between two paradoxical concepts doesn’t mean retaining that tension. It often has to be rediscovered and rediscovered and rediscovered. We have to look at it from different angles and test its validity in different situations. But finding it, seeing it, having that moment of clarity is the first step in growth.

First, love deeply and hold loosely. The Lord has filled the earth with wonder and beauty and life. Love deeply and hold loosely. We can’t protect and provide for those in our homes and hearts through sheer willpower. We can only love them for however long we have them. Sometimes that’s loving a baby chick for five days, and sometimes that’s loving a specific man for 24+ years, and hopefully many more. In each case, we love (living in the moment) but loosely (eternal perspective). This keeps us from leaning from one extreme to the other—being so eternity-focused that we stop seeing God’s gifts of temporary beauty, or behaving as if nothing around us matters at all, or so living in the moment that we try to bear the weight of it all and control it all. We live with an open hand and open heart, knowing God will kindly and lovingly give and take.

This is easy to say and almost impossible to do. Holding loosely to the things we love deeply is not our natural instinct. One of the ways I’ve practiced this (without this label on it) is using things. I love my mugs and my books and my journals. Nothing makes me happier than my favorite mug filled with black coffee or bright hibiscus tea. I love a new journal. What endless possibilities to think thoughts or write stories! A pristine book is just waiting to be read. The temptation is to keep them all unsullied. I might break the mug, scratch and stain the journal, bend the cover of the book. I might lose them. I used to really struggle with this. I feared using things because they would no longer be in that new and perfect condition. What a foolish way to think! I would rather use a mug I adore and eventually break it than never use it at all. What is the point of it but to be used? I have changed what I love over the years. I love my mugs with a few dings. I love my journals filled with half-baked novel ideas, random bits of nature, and maybe a poop stain from a chicken. I adore old, used books. Give me a tattered paperback any day. I’ve learned to love scruffy instead of perfection.

As I lost three hens in 2025, I had to ask myself if it was emotionally worth it. I can’t have a big flock. Eight is my limit. I raise them from babies so that I know them and they know me…besides, it is too much fun to play mama hen for a few weeks. When you only have a few hens and you’ve had them pretty much from day one, it is difficult to lose them. But hens aren’t long-lived animals, generally speaking, nor are they exceptionally hardy. I am choosing to love something that I will regularly have to watch die. I could stop. I could say, “I can’t do this.” Instead, I practice loving deeply and holding loosely. If I get five days or five years to love this animal, that is a privilege as much as seeing my iris bloom for a few days. Because something is small and temporary doesn’t mean it shouldn’t be loved, and just because something is hard doesn’t mean I shouldn’t do it. I am working on loving deeply and holding loosely.

Second, we have a present perspective. I’m suggesting, mostly to myself, that I change the way I label and describe living in the moment. I always feel like saying living in the moment isn’t quite right, at least for me. Maybe because I tend to be emotional and, as a writer, I’m always observing life or dreaming up the next story, I don’t know that I’m not living in the moment. Or part of me feels like it is too close to YOLO and living like it was your last day. I’m suspicious of it, and I don’t know exactly why. So I want a different term or phrase. I struggle with my brain always spinning with what comes next and next and next and next. And what’s the plan and the backup plan and the backup plan’s backup plan? I have a yearly calendar all set out with things and weekly calendars filled with plans, and I wake up with what is happening next week and next month all in my head. It is exhausting. It’s deafening. And it is not helpful. It produces anxiety and franticness. Be Present is something short and sharp that I can tell my overactive brain. Instead of fretting about things I have no control over, I am present in what is happening right now. Instead of thinking about the day’s tasks, goals, priorities, and appointments, I want to be present. I want to listen to my keyboard’s clacking music and the nearby train’s haunting call as it passes by. I want to notice the soft silence in the home. I want to enjoy the sharp taste of my coffee. I want to embrace the darkness muted by a few lamps. I want to be present right now, not rummaging and rooting through the future like a pig after truffles. There are no truffles; it is a fruitless endeavor because I’m not in control and the plans I have laid aren’t promised to me.

‍ ‍Consider the ravens: they neither sow nor reap, they have neither storehouse nor barn, and yet God feeds them.
‍ ‍Of how much more value are you than the birds!
‍ ‍And which of you by being anxious can add a single hour to his span of life?
‍ ‍If then you are not able to do as small a thing as that, why are you anxious about the rest?
‍ ‍Consider the lilies, how they grow: they neither toil nor spin, yet I tell you, even Solomon in all his glory was not arrayed like one of these.
‍ ‍But if God so clothes the grass, which is alive in the field today, and tomorrow is thrown into the oven, how much more will he clothe you, O you of little faith!
‍ ‍Luke 12:24-28

‍My husband’s emergency health situation has brought back to the surface of my mind this reality: that in one hand I hold an eternal perspective and in the other I hold a being-present perspective. I am looking to eternity because there are my hope and my rest. There is life with Christ in the new heavens and the new earth. Eternity keeps me sane when I’m making yet another phone call and paying yet another bill and asking yet another question and going to yet another appointment. This isn’t a waste of my one life. This is just a pocket in my forever. I can do this. Being present is a way of letting go of control. I am present right now. I don’t know what tomorrow may bring, and at this point in my life, I don’t know what the next five minutes will bring. So I lay my plans out only so I know what my priorities are if I’m given the opportunity to choose what happens next. I lay plans only to help with time management and decision fatigue. I don’t set them in stone. I don’t put my trust in them. They may never happen. Being present grounds my eternal perspective.

This world is not my home, but it is a temporary shelter that I can still love and make beautiful. I just can’t love it like it and I will be here forever.

While I’m practicing holding onto this tension, I love deeply and hold loosely. I’m present in this moment, loving the man that I have, the chickens in the yard, the flowers that are blooming. None of them are promised to me or owed to me. Each one is a gift for a season, and that season is set by my Heavenly Father, not by me. What a blessed relief that thought is. Someone all-powerful, bigger, wiser, and better than me, who can see all, holds me and everything I love. He is in control, and He loves me. Like a child, I can go make my mud pies knowing my Father is taking care of all that I need. I can play and work in freedom because He is carrying the weight of the world, not me. What a blessed place to be.‍ ‍

Being Present in Light of Eternity

Bruce and the Daisy