The Pine Box Derby

It was us.

Racing like the wind towards the checkered flag...

We were transcending the moment, the flashbulbs lighting up all over as we rounded the final curve...

The intensity was mounting, the pressure was building, we were getting so close...

All of our loved-ones were yelling and hollering at us from the sidelines...

The sweat, and the time, and the money, and the choices, and the sacrifices, and the agony had all led up to this...

But then...

amazingly...

miraculously...

we stopped.

We stopped racing to the grave.

We stopped short: some a bit back from that ultimate ending line, and some only just barely...but we all stopped.

We stopped and we started instead to let go of all that time, and money, and choices, and sacrifices, and agony that we had invested in...and wasted on...creating miserable, unhealthy lives.

We stopped, and for the first time by God we really, truly listened to what our loved-ones were yelling from the sidelines.

We stopped and we listened, and we heard their frantic, yelling, hoarse-voiced begging. With tears rolling down their faces, they pleaded...

"Please. Please come back to me."

"Please don't die and leave your family here alone..."

"Please don't leave us without a mother..."

"Please don't leave us without a father..."

"Please see how amazing you are and the opportunities you have in this life...they are endless!"

"Please don't do this to yourself. Do you not know that you are loved?!"

"You are my spouse, my best friend, why are you doing this to yourself?! Please turn around!"

"Don't you understand where you are headed?!?"

We stopped, and we got down on our knees right there on the track, and told ourselves that we would never go another step further.

We stopped that moment and committed to everything and everyone important to us that we would never finish that race.

We turned back instead and started on a new path.

A new journey.

And we are on that road now.

And as a result, we will have moments more incredible than our imaginations can even fathom. Those moments are yet for us to live.

There is a richness, and a power, and a beauty, and a joy that comes from making the right decisions, and making them as often as possible, and giving your all to every one of them.

And all of that is now ours for the taking.

We stopped short on that track before, and in doing so we left caskets sitting alone and unused by themselves at the finish line; caskets decaying and breaking apart with age...

They sit there still.

They were there waiting for us at the end of that race we used to be running. They were put there by us. Those ornate wooden crates were built by our own hands.

Yes, and those caskets would have housed our lives that we half-assed, our relationships we destroyed, our opportunities left unfulfilled, our gifts to the world left unharvested, our shattered faith and hope, our atrophied love for ourselves, and for some...our very bodies: bloated, and hollow, and dead.

But now the caskets lay in disrepair...wasting away.

Because we have the power to choose.

We can choose.

And choose wisely.

We can choose to embrace this gift of a life and create with it whatever we desire. The health, in every possible sense of the word, that we crave, can be ours.

So, let our next step be one down that new path.

Let us go forth with confidence and passion and love and truth and integrity and 100% effort.

Let us speed and fly towards a phenomenal, healthy life.

Are you ready?

On your mark...

Get set...

GO!!!