Bucket List

For someone who is a passionate list maker, it may surprise you that I don’t have a bucket list. Maybe I think I’m too young for that. Which is a really nice thought, however untruthful it may be. More likely I think of things I want to do as not the last things I will do. They’re just things I want to accomplish in my life, not simply do before I die. I suppose, in essence, that’s the same thing. It’s just different ways of looking at it.

 

The past fall my dad retired and one of the hobbies he has taken up in politics. It’s not a new “hobby”. Dad was part of the planning commission (or something like that) when I was very young and we lived in Texas. I remember going to political get-togethers with him as a child in Tennessee, and I remember handing out George H. W. Bush bumper stickers and flyers with him back in during the 1988 election. After that, we moved, more kids came, he travelled more with work, and politics fell to the wayside. Unless you count politicking in your own home. He was good at that. And why not? He was raising eight little voters, four times as many as most people bring into the world!

 

But now he’s got time on his hands and he’s back at it. It’s something he’s interested in and has always wanted to do. At his age, people might say it’s something on his bucket list. I think it’s just something he wants to do with his life. And it got me to thinking. What else do I want to do with my life?

 

In the midst of raising three kids, homeschooling, working part time, serving at church, keeping a house, and all the others things I pile on; it would be easy to say I’m good right now. The only problem is, it really bugs me to just go on with my life as if I have nothing left to achieve until I’m 60 and the kids are finally grown. The very idea drives me insane. I don’t want to live like that. I want to achieve something. Not President of the United States, but something. Three somethings.

 

First, I’d really like a home. Not a place to rent. A place I can call our own. A place to paint the walls however I want. A place to unpack allmy books. A place where the kids can grow up…and then come home to. If I’m honest, except for eight years of my life, it’s always something I’ve wanted. Something I’ve never really had. And, right now, something that just seems like it’s on hold. Again. And again. And again. Not a lot I can do about that now except pray. So I do.

 

Second, I want to be a writer. I think I’ve wanted to be a writer since I was eleven years old and put pen to paper in scribbling my first story about a bunch of girls who started a cheerleading squad. A silly story, but from that moment on I was rarely found not scribbling something during some part of the day…until life as an adult start catching up with me in my thirties. Then I got married. Then I had kids. And now I can barely keep up a blog. But I sometimes think of the stories I want to write in the few seconds of consciousness between putting my book down and sleeping. And the other day after a trip to the library as I lugged a bag overflowing with books into our car, even Ed turned to me and said, “Why don’t you just write books?” Words I thought I’d never hear him say because even though he knows I like to write, he’s never read a sentence of anything I have written and probably never will. And for the first time in years, I started really thinking about it…

 

And finally, join the Daughters of the American Revolution. I think I’ve wanted to do this ever since I found out I had relatives who fought in the Revolution and even started looking at it when I was in my late 20s. But I didn’t follow through for one reason or another and tabled it, almost not thinking about it again until a Christmas letter a couple of years ago from a family we knew in Pittsburgh. I hadn’t known she was a member of DAR, and it got me thinking. But with one thing or another, I didn’t follow through. Until the thought suddenly hit me again last week…and today as I was waiting for my laptop to save some graphic-heavy proposal to my work server, I opened up their website. Filled out an interest form. And then got several emails from the local chapter before the night was over. That settled it. I’m gathering my information and meeting with one of the women on Saturday to figure it all out. I’m finally going to do it. I’m gong to join DAR!

I still don’t have a bucket list. I doubt I ever will. The things above are things I just want to do with my life. Because that’s what God gives us a life for: to live. For Him. And after that eternity. Isn’t that a wonderful thought?