To be upfront, I hate theories.  I think that’s why I perceive my college education with such loathing.  Because college was about theory.  And theory is not application.  A theory is just an idea that maybe something is true, if this, this, and this are true too.  Or maybe this could happen, if all of the variables are all perfectly aligned in a galaxy far, far away.  Ugh.

But I’m going to be a little hypocritical and give you a theory anyway.  Because if you read it correctly, this theory can be applied.  And maybe change your outlook on life.  Like it has on mine.

It’s my theory of why people die.

Brace yourself.

What if…

we die

when we have

loved others enough?

Now I don’t mean over time, or loving a certain number of people.  That’s silly.  As soon as we have enough little “love tallies”, it’s our time?  Right.  If that were the case, some of us would just continue being our normal, stubborn, crotchety selves …just out of spite.  Just to see how long we could keep our tickers tickin’.

Instead, what if we each have a personal “love mission”?  And once our individual mission is complete, our lives end soonafter.

I imagine each of our missions are different.  For some of us, it may be to show love and compassion towards everyone at work.  Or everyone in our family.  Or everyone within our small group.  Others of us, it may simply be to love and be compassionate to one particular person.  For some of us, it may be how we love:  with our time, our hands, our words, etc.  For some it may be to love in one particular way.  For others it may be to love in all possible ways.  So we can’t compare our mission to anyone else’s.  It’s individual to us and us alone.

And here is where the theory really gets sticky:  What if our mission is to love in the exact way that it hurts us the most?  Like…give hugs in lieu of eye rolls.  To love a sibling in their love language, instead of our own.  To sit 7 hours with a grandparent so they can teach us that one thing we don’t want to learn but they want to teach.  The love mission that feels the most impossible.  And until we do that, sincerely, our mission is left incomplete, and our ticker keeps ticking.  Until we’ve accomplished our mission.

Chris was so much better at loving others that I sometimes wondered if I had a different Maker.  Like maybe I was somehow made with a few robot parts.  Or if I was partially Grinch.

“Oh, you went and visited that lady’s mother at the hospital?  Did you even know the mother?  How did that idea even occur to you?  Seems to me it would have been more efficient to just send a ‘Get Well’ text…”

See what I mean?  I was not born with the same understanding of loving others.

For him, I don’t know what his personal mission was.  But I do know he loved others something fierce.  He understood people, and love, and how to make people feel loved.  It was a gift he always had, for as long as I knew him.  He loved with his time, with his words, with his advice, with his texts, with his pep talks, with his monetary resources, with his laughter, and with his understanding.  He loved so well and with such sacrifice that he accomplished his mission by 34.  And so, his time was up.

Me…mmmm…love is tough.  If sassy comebacks and brutal honesty were a love language, I would be the Ethan Hunt of impossible love missions.  But they’re not.  Although my sass and snark seem to be lovable qualities for some, they are not necessarily a language of love towards others.

No, my mission is to have more compassion towards those who are different from me.  My mission is to have the patience to spend time where it matters.  With my phone put away.  My mission of love is to love others to the point I feel the sacrifice on my end.  To the point that it’s uncomfortable, and that it hurts.  To the point that I have handed over more of myself to someone who can never return the favor, than I have handed myself a favor with a tangible reward.

So, yeah.  I’ll be here a while.  I don’t even like to let people merge in front of me.  Or to stop for pedestrians.  Sometimes I don’t even greet people.  And I’m a Southerner!

I have a lot of loving left to learn.  And to show.

Now, I actually cannot tell you for sure that this is my mission.  But I’m pretty sure.  I mean, kind of sure.  Sort of.  I have evidence.  Okay, not evidence, so much as a feeling.  A nagging, depths of my soul, constant voice in my head, feeling.

The feeling is this:  loving others to the point of sacrifice is something I always know I should do.  “Katie, go take dinner to…”  “Katie, see that lady struggling with groceries?  Go help her.”  “Katie, go spend the weekend with…”  “Katie, give to this cause…”  And they are sacrifices because I am selfish.  With my time, my resources, my time.

But I hear the voice.  The little annoying “angel” on one of my shoulders.  Loud and clear.  And then I don’t do it.  I avoid the thing.  I avoid the act of love.  I make an excuse to myself, or I treat it like a fleeting thought, or I put it off to the point that it never happens.  It’s what I do.  It becomes the impossible mission.  Any other time, I am action-oriented, typically moving at the speed of a Porsche on the Autobahn.  But when it’s a sacrificial act of love, I shift gears into something resembling a glacier sliding through cement.

And the fact that it’s always on my mind, and always the thing I avoid, convinces me that this is it.  That it will be my life mountain.  My seemingly impossible love mission.  My Everest.

So that’s my theory.  I could be wrong.  I’m wrong more than I like to admit, anyway.

On the other hand, it does give it all a little more meaning, doesn’t it?  It does answer a few nagging questions I have for God about, “Why now?”,  “Why him?”.  All those questions I try so hard not to ask, but that can’t be erased from my mind completely, like that dust bunny way under the bookshelf that refuses to be swept up.

And when I think about it that way – using my theory of why as my rose-colored sunglasses – it gives me a little more purpose.  And gives me a little peace.

Maybe it does for you too.