A life well lived?

The mosaic making fest continues and I have popped in for lunch - one of my favourite meals of nice cheese and crackers (crumbs all over the keyboard...). Here's one of the latest pieces.

My dear husband has toddled off to Manchester this morning for his annual children's lawyer conference - I miss him a lot when he goes away (which thankfully is not often) and am very grateful for living in an amazing, community-spirited street with many wonderful neighbours close at hand. Many of us have young children and the level of mutual support is a total lifeline and very enriching. Our own urban tribe?

This morning a friend told me the saddest story of a lady she knew. This woman lived in a stunning home, had an expensive car and had retired from a successful career. She was dying of cancer and found herself alone, without family or many friends. She told my friend "I think I have wasted my life". A few weeks later she died. Her haunting words have been circling round my head. I have always been the kind of person that grasps life tenaciously. I am very determined and focussed. I wonder if she was the same, but realised too late that she had pursued the wrong things? How will we look back and evaluate our lives so that we can say "I have not wasted my life - it was a life well lived"?  I think top of my list will be loving relationships, community, beauty, creativity and plain old human kindness.

A quote I heard about 20 years ago has stayed with me as a good plumbline:  "The glory of God is a human being fully alive". That is what I want to be - fully alive and sparking life around me. I guess that will be a life well lived.