defining moments...

I am reading a book right now called Seizing Your Divine Moment and so far I love it. It's one of my favorite books already. Reading it has prompted me to think back over the 27 years of moments in my life to determine which ones were the defining ones. This has proved difficult for me because there are so many to chose from:
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1-Christmas Eve when I was probably 5 or 6 we let our dog (my first pet), Pepsi, out in the backyard to do his duty. Half an hour later we went to let him in and he was gone, the back gate to our backyard was open, and there were footprints in the snow. We would never see him again despite all the posters we posted and phone calls we made. I was heartbroken. He was just a mutt. To someone else he was just an mangy dog who looked exactly like Benji and liked to get in trouble. But to my family, and mostly to me, he was a companion, a pillow, a blanket, and a friend. Thus began the seemingly never-ending parade of dogs through my life and it was probably when my tender, relentless, yearning love for dogs began.
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2-Winters in the house in Clinton, MO made up some of my favorite memories. The house we lived in didn't really have a reliable heat source that would heat the whole house. But, and this was one of the things I loved the most about that house, it had a wood-burning stove. My parents and my sister (two sisters once we adopted Lisa) and I would bring our blankets and pillows to the living room at night. We would all cuddle up together on the floor around the stove and sing Christmas carols. Talk. Laugh. And dream into the night until the sunlight broke through the windows. This probably is the reason why I have to have a fireplace where ever I live.
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3-There are several songs that, in some ways, have defined my life:

"The Rose" by Bette Midler - I think this was the song that made me want to be a songwriter. I probably wasn't old enough to know what a songwriter was the first time I heard it, but I am sure I knew it had changed my life.

"Daddy's Hands" by Holly Dunn - I don't think I need to explain this one any.

"Faithfully" by Journey (a classic, maybe THE classic) - I fell in love for the first time to this song with my best friend Ryan Carney. We were in high school - or at least I was in high school, he had already graduated - and I was in love. I met him at a lock-in" at my church and it was instant. He had just broken up with his girlfriend but that didn't stop me from telling him 2 days later that I was absolutely crazy about him. We became best friends. He told me a few years after that he had been waiting for me to make the first move. I waited for him to make the first move. Alas, no one made the first move. But the first time I heard this song (at least I never remembered hearing it before) was in his car the summer after my sophomore year of high school on one of many dates that weren't really dates even though he always paid and to any teenage girl they were dates. We both loved music so it just made sense that this would be our song. I still can't listen to it without thinking of him; this song is probably the reason I love Journey so much - STILL!

"Mandolin Rain" (aaahh Bruce Hornsby) - I can hear the "music on the lake"
even now and see it, love this song. I can picture them under their tent hiding from the rain. Love it!

"Make Me Lose Control" (Eric Carman) - another song that reminds me of Ryan. I know, it's weird that these romantic songs make me think of him even though we never kissed even though we both madly wanted to several times and several times had the perfect atmosphere for an unbelievable first kiss together. We slow-danced to this song under the stars at a park one night.

"Right Here Waiting" (Richard Marx) - When this song first came out in 1989 (I was 12) it was the song that I dreamed a boy would play for me to profess his love, or the song that I dreamed I would dance my first slow-dance to. In high school I went on a mission's trip to Chicago with my youth group and a boy I had a crush on, Chip, played this song on the piano for me.

"Because You Loved Me" (Celine Dion) - This song speaks to the heart of my relationship with my mother. I still can't listen to it and not think of her. I miss her so immensely; she died 5 years ago just shy of 49.

"Fur Elise" - because it was one of my mom's favorite songs to play on the
piano and because it's played in one of my favorite movies "Man From Snowy River." About a month ago I saw my cousin Ali, who just turned 16, play this flawlessly, by memory at her piano recital. I bawled.

There are just too many songs that changed my life in some small way. It's amazing how hearing a song today that I first heard years ago still has the power to continue to change me because of the memories it brings back with it.
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4-There are movies I have seen that have shaped my life:

I can trace my desire, albeit brief desire, to become a Broadcast Journalist back to the movie "Up Close & Personal." I actually enrolled but lost interest when I learned that Robert Redford would not be my boss/mentor/lover. Okay not really but.... It still moved me enough to decide on a major. I still love this movie and I still cry at the end - no, I still bawl at the end.

"Life as a House" - There are few, if any, movies that I love more than this one. I loved this movie because of the metaphor in it. After losing his job, a man realizes he has no life, no relationship with his kids, a failed marriage, a crumbling house on the shore with a beautiful view, and an illness. He takes on the daunting task of rebuilding his life (and his house) from the ground up. An amazing story!

"Message in a Bottle" - the last movie I saw with my mother, just the two of us, before she died. It became one of our favorite movies and we watched it several more times together before her passing.

"Thief in the Night" - I was watching this when I first asked Jesus to come into my life at the tender age of 8.

"Robin Hood: Prince of Thieves" - This was where I went on my first real date
ever. It was the summer before my freshman year and his junior year. His name
was Matt Slater. And yes, "Everything I Do" became our song.

"Dead Poets Society" - The first time I saw this I loved it and I love it more each time still. It was when I first heard this Thoreau quote: "I went to the woods because I wanted to live deliberately, I wanted to live deep and suck out all the marrow of life, To put to rout all that was not life and not when I had come to die discover that I had not lived." This movie inspired me in so many ways the main plot was learning how to "Carpe Diem" - Seize the Day! And I remember hoping that all my teachers would be like John Keating.

There are many other movies that have shaped me in some small or significant way but these are probably the big ones.
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5-Fall 1992, my sophomore year of high school. I enrolled in choir at Shawnee Mission South High School where a girl named Nida would sit behind me and play with my hair. It would be the beginning of what remains today a beautiful friendship. She became my best friend.
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6-Thursday 30 March 2000. This was the night that my mother passed away. The hardest night of my entire life. My father and I were in the room with her and made the decision together to not have the doctors resuscitate her a second time (they had resuscitated her once and had her on life support but her heart stopped again). It was the hardest decision of my entire life but one that I am proud of; I put her above my self. This was one of the most unselfish acts in my life. I could have made the decision to bring her back in order to keep her with me, keep her here for me to hold her hand. But I chose to let go of her physical body and in its place I got her spirit, her heart, her memory. I suppose that is one way that her death profoundly changed me: I grew up. I grew up fast in that moment. Every ounce of selfishness that was in me emptied out of me in that moment.
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7-July 2004. I completed BreakThrough (a HeartConnexion ministry). After 26 years of surviving, stuck in habits and beliefs about myself that weren't working for me, I decided I wanted to really LIVE. BreakThrough helped catapult me from surviving to living and started me on the journey to becoming the best version of me that I was meant to be. The best thing I have ever done for myself and the best thing you could ever do for yourself as well.
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8-11 May 1985. We had had a young girl living with us for a while and she became my sister Lisa on this day. We went to the Royals game that day and they won. They went on to win the World Series that year, what remains today their only world championship.
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There are several other moments I am sure. These are the ones that prove to be the most important to me. I love that the moment I am in right now is the one in front of me to seize. To squeeze everything out of it possible. To get everything out of it that I can. The little moments that don't seem significant can turn out to be the most significant moments of your life: how that 4 minutes and 52 seconds that that song was playing can determine the rest of your life, how hearing a particular song can forever bring back memories of young love, how a movie can move you so profoundly, how a few evenings in front of a wood-burning stove can forever remain a part of you, how 4 weekends out of your life can change you from the inside out, how a few minutes spent deciding on whether someone you love will live or die will change you in ways you never imagined.

These are just a few of the moments of my life. Moments that I cherish and treasure. Moments that I can look back on and laugh or cry, but that I can look back on and feel the way I felt back then, smell the smells, hear the sounds, receive the gift of that moment again. I can be there again and relive them. These moments are a part of me. They make up who I am. They are some of my defining moments. What are yours?