Some questions for evaluating “how you’re doing” in your life and “where you’re headed.”

*****
My friend and former workmate, Darrell Dorr, sent me a letter three months ago when his father-in-law, Dr. Ralph Winter, one of my most significant mentors, died.

I read Dr. Winter’s obituary that Darrell wrote. I ignored his letter. Until today.

I thought what he had to say was worthy of sharing broadly.

“Ralph Winter’s death has been the occasion for me to reflect more deeply on my life,” he wrote, “to take inventory with a series of questions. You may wish to take a similar inventory of your life.”

I agree.

So here are the questions he proposed:

• Am I prepared to die? Am I afraid of death or of suffering before death? Am I eagerly anticipating heaven? Do I have any unfinished business on earth? Have I prepared my family to do well when they gather around my deathbed?
   
• Am I ready to live? Jesus said, “I have come that they may have life, and may have it in all its fullness” (John 10:10). Where is my life still lacking fullness? Where are my experiences and expectations feeble or attenuated? Where do I need to trust God more fully, to live life more deeply, to take more risks, to open my arms and my heart more widely?
   
• What has captivated my heart? Do my affections and ambitions need refreshment or realignment? Do I care about what God cares most about? Am I moving out into the broad, deep current of God’s purposes, or am I splashing around in puddles of my own making?
   
• Whose approval am I seeking? Am I living primarily in the fear of God and before the Audience of One? Where and when do I care too much about the approval of others?
   
• Am I a good steward of what God has given me? Do I understand what I have and hold in trust? Am I walking confidently in my calling, recognizing more clearly that place where “[my] deep gladness meets the world’s deep hunger” (Frederich Buechner)?
   
• Am I aging well, and will I finish well? Who am I becoming? Am I a joy to those who know me best? Where have my coping mechanisms become calcified or counter-productive? Am I becoming more mature in my character while remaining childlike in my spirit?

–Good questions, it seems to me, for us to consider no matter what our age. But especially valuable as we are hitting midlife and beyond.

–John

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