YOLO

Coca Cola’s recent marketing scheme has tempted many of us to buy a drink, not because we’re thirsty, but just to see the word printed on the can. Today I splurged and purchased a Coke Zero (I was thirsty). There it was, my special word, “YOLO.” I pondered and puzzled. Was it English or Nyanja? Could it be a new video game? I wasn’t sure. I consulted my culture expert when he arrived home from school “Chris, what does YOLO mean?”

For those of you, over 50 who are not adolescent medicine specialists (I’ll bet Michelle Barratt knows this word), YOLO stands for You Only Live Once. I learned It has negative connotations in pop culture. Chris explicated at length. It is apparently an encouragement to excessive and often harmful behavior, similar to the idea of drink till you’re drunk.

When I say YOLO, however, I mean something entirely different. I use it to dare myself, and others to live life well. I say it to challenge my fearful anxious self to dream God-sized dreams and not to shy away from possible failure. Perfectionists and procrastinators desperately need this word.

 I once encouraged a physician co-worker to consider making some major changes in her life by telling her, “You only live once,” Shortly after our discussion she gave notice and quit a month before the yearly bonus. She was unmarried and hadn’t been on a vacation for years. She usually stayed at the office until late in the evening and on the weekends crashed behind closed shutters until Monday. At her goodbye party she announced, “It was Dr McAuley who told me to resign.” All eyes turned to glare at me. “She told me you know you only get to do this life once.” (YOLO) “I don’t have a job but I’m going on a cruise, then I’m going to spend time with my nieces and I’m going to dance. I’m not sure what I’m going to do after that but I am trusting God to lead the way.” YOLO is one of the reasons we are in Africa right now.

So, I am going to keep my can. It’s a phrase I want to be confronted with on a regular basis. I want to live more passionately, to live abundantly. Life is incredibly short and health is transient. I don’t want to waste a minute or as the song says, “I don’t want to go through the motions I don’t want to go one more day without your all consuming passion inside of me. I don’t want to spend my whole life asking what if I had given everything, instead of going through the motions.” This idea of no regrets, has recently taken on a more urgent beat. A dear friend’s college aged daughter just had a shunt placed and will have a brain biopsy in a week. It looks like a tumor. A sister in Christ begins chemotherapy for metastatic ovarian cancer next Tuesday. No one wants this to be part of the journey. We pray deliver us from evil and this is exactly the kind of evil we mean. We are never ready to spend time in the desert, to be tested and refined in the fire of suffering.

Can we praise God in the storm no matter where that storm takes us?  Even if we feel shipwrecked? I have been crying out to Jesus, asking God to do something amazing, creative, brilliant, transformative and restorative in the lives of these friends. I feel sadness and I tearfully lament at the brokenness of our human condition. I don’t ask why, I just ask to know with assurance He is in charge and His grip will not waiver, even until the end.  

Another friend, who may have missed her calling as a stand up comedian, reported a recent encounter with her physician. She’d gone with a newly discovered lump in the neck and fearfully asked if she was going to die. Her doctor took off his glasses, looked her directly in the eyes and said, “We are all going to die.” 100% mortality-No one gets out of this life alive. What will we do with the time that is left?

Father God, I AM, the great physician, the healer of the broken, the savior and redeemer, the beginning and the end, hold us in your grip. Remind us daily to make the most of the time we are given, for your glory. YOLO.