Sheets Of Life

I did some house cleaning in my home office today. I needed to because I wanted to get organized so I could have an efficient office space as I start my new job. A funny thing happened while I was cleaning out files… I ran across my life! For real! Pieces of my life were condensed into a set of Pendaflex files! Insensitive leaflets of life. Sheets of life! Here’s just a short list of what I found:

• A paystub from my first employer in Clearwater, FL
• Printed emails from coworkers in the company I worked for in Tampa
• A letter of recommendation from the CEO of the start-up company I helped get underway in Atlanta and info on the amount of severance I received from them
• Hundreds of letters I wrote to a wide variety of employers as I struggled to get out of the unemployment line during difficult economic times
• Mortgage information during a refinancing effort
• A cartoon I drew after I had completed an exercise to determine what type of work I’d be passionate about
• An article from Scott Hahn titled ‘The Fourth Cup’,
• Blank labels to prepare yet another folder of life’s little sheets
• Plans for constructing an outdoor barbeque and a miter saw table (not together…um, let’s see. What a combo! Barbeque grill w/miter saw table! The images this conjures up can be rather scary!)
• Old resumes needing serious updates
• Death certificates of my in-laws - needed to file insurance and property claims
• Mother’s Day cards with cute sayings from the kids
• Instructions for assembling a model of the U.S.S. Constitution.

These eight and one half by eleven sheets of paper represent events in my life that define, in part, who I am today. I’m sure you’ve heard about how people have a vision of their entire life passing before their eyes while going through a near death experience. As I leafed through the papers deciding what to keep and what to toss I was struck by all that it represented. I was equally impressed by how much emotional pain and struggle could NOT be gleaned from these sheets of life. How one represented a great experience while another a tragic event full of tears and agony. These sheets of life in a drawer in my office witnessed the rising and setting of the sun for years on end while I had moved on to the events of today. They witnessed the passing from one event in life to the next that only a few could appreciate. Now, during one of the better times, I can look back, reflect and toss all that away because it simply doesn’t matter now.