Extreme Makeover Home Edition

I really enjoy when I get to watch Extreme Makeover Home Edition. I am deeply moved by the sense of community and the giving attitudes of the people that volunteer their time and efforts for helping someone else. This past week's episode was especially gratifying. A police officer was shot in the line of duty resulting in a spinal cord injury. The show and volunteers built the officer and his wife and family a home and barn that was wheelchair accessible allowing him more mobility and function than he could achieve in his previous home. What made this show even better than usual was it highlighted his physical therapists who had been working with him since his unfortunate accident. It was great to see the love and admiration among this gentleman, his family, and his therapists and to hear how important they were and are in his life. I must admit I was teary by the end of show (which is my usual reaction to all of these shows).
It is great to hear of people helping people whether that is through volunteering to help build a house or teaching people to ride horses or doing a good job as a therapist.

Bigger than Life

While I was driving to work early this morning I thought of a dear friend of mine from junior and senior high school. She used to remind us, "to be Bigger than Life." She was always an optimist, a leader, and a motivator. At the time, I really didn't understand what she meant by being bigger than life. As I have gotten older and hopefully a little wiser, I think I am better understanding what she meant and I think there are different interpretations of her favorite saying:
In our every day life sometimes we start feeling consumed by it all, we have chapters to read, notes to study, skills to practice and that is just for school, then we have our work to do and if that isn't enough we have to go home and fix dinner and take out the trash. I believe that we often get lost in all of those 'life' things. Perhaps what Stephanie was saying was to rise above it all...be bigger than life.
But, there are also a lot of very beautiful and big things in life: think about the Pacific Ocean or Central Park or the Rocky Mountains. There are huge and wonderful things out there in each of our lives. Perhaps Stephanie was saying that we need to strive everyday to be even bigger than those big wonderful life things.
When I was in college I had a hard time gaining weight (those days are far behind me now. My roommates and I used to have "get big weekends" where we would eat hardy and work out as much as we could in order to get stronger and gain weight and get big. We worked hard at improving ourselves physically. I think we can use the same notion to get big mentally or spiritually or emotionally.
I don't know why "be bigger than life" flashed into my noggin this morning but I admonish you to have a get big weekend so that you can work on being bigger than life in the area that you might want or need the extra effort. I hope you come back next week a little bigger.