Re-evaluating Life

This year has been the year of contemplation so for; a year of really looking within. Day after day I am reminded about what this life is really all about, or what it is all about for me. God just keeps putting reminders in front of me and sometimes I seem to walk right passed and other times I trip and get a good slap in the face or skinned knee. The truth is though, the people I meet on this journey and the relationships I make are all I am going to take with me when I go. My family; my husband, my kids, my parents, my brother even my extended family they of course take a portion of my heart, a large portion. They really are a part of my heart but, that love that is a blood love, a natural love, an unconditional love. The dilemma I have been facing recently is how much of my love, my heart have I been extending to others? To my friends I would consider family, to my acquaintances or to strangers? To the people that are going to unexpectedly imprint my heart? I am not so great with words and do not always know how to express myself but I do know this. I do not forget my friends. I do not forget what they have taught me about love, life or friendship. Until recently I would say that there has not even been a friendship that just ended, one I thought I might never be able to go back to. I have been blessed with friends. I know that I could call any one of them up, even ones who because of distance or life I have not talked to in years and could pick up right were we left off. I love that about friends. So, what is different now? Have I got to comfortable and stopped making new ones. Did life and time just jump from 20 mph to 95 mph? I do not really know. I do know that I do not want to come to the end and not have touched people. I want to leave imprints on their hearts and have some more on mine. I want to be an example to my kids. I want to show them that while family is important so is everyone else that we pass. I want them to be blessed with friends. I want them to value people of all kinds and I want them to have an abundant of footprints on their hearts. God has blessed me with a great love for people, an empathetic and understanding heart. For sometime now I have been selfish though and out of touch with it. My new prayer is that I start connecting to the people that God is putting before me; that I grow deeper in the relationships that I have, while also making new ones. Sometimes I will stumble, get hurt but in the end I will have another imprint. There will be another person who has taught me something about myself, this world, this life…good or bad. And maybe just maybe I will have touched them too.
To all of you who have touched and are touching my life, thank you! I might not say it enough but I appreciate our friendship. I appreciate what you teach me daily.