The New Eve - Lewis Robert [55]
This Now lifestyle is the opposite of living with the end in mind. Comparison and competition are its chief values. Do I look right? Do I look better than you? Do I have enough? Do I have more than you? Am I better positioned than you? Are my children outperforming yours? You chase after the latest and best with passion, never questioning whether it will be the right stuff in the end.
It rarely is.
My good friend Bob Buford is a gifted social observer. He especially loves analyzing what brings out the best in people. In his book Finishing Well, Bob relayed the following insight that he gleaned from Peter Drucker. Speaking of what he calls the “exemplars” or “heroes” of life—people whose lives have not only been successful but have actually gotten better over time—Drucker said, “They may not be smarter than the others, but the main difference between them and the nonheroes is that they think ahead.”6 Most people don't think ahead. They let life surprise them.
The Now lifestyle is a life primed for surprise but not the kind of surprise you're looking for.
Satisfying Legacy
Shakespeare wrote, “No legacy is so rich as honesty.” I won't dispute the importance of honesty, but I would like to submit the following amendment: No legacy is so rich as a life lived with the end in mind.
The woman who lives this way has a rare perspective. Because she knows that one day she will face God, she orders her life to be God-pleasing and other-centered. She lives to make a difference she can identify now. With this end in mind she makes wise decisions and avoids foolish dead ends. She holds that course even when it is hard because she believes it will bring her great satisfaction. And like Abraham, she finds that her satisfaction with life grows with time. By life's end she has carved out a rich legacy of benefiting others through her works and passions. Her life and godly character have impacted her friends, her community, and her family. “Her children rise up and bless her; Her husband also, and he praises her, saying, ‘Many daughters have done nobly, but you excel them all’” (Prov. 31:28–29).
How does this differ from the legacy so many women are forging as they adopt the world's ever-shifting values? Flip on E! or read People magazine, and you'll get a pretty good idea.
By definition a legacy is what you leave to others that echoes through the generations. Choices, habits, and circumstances can perpetuate themselves from mother to daughter and on down the line. Take rock star and quintessential bad girl Courtney Love, for example. Her mother, Linda Carroll, described her as “a whirlwind of rage and venom and passion in peroxide hair and lacy, torn dresses.”7 What led Courtney down this path? Her mother thinks it is in the genes. Courtney was born “with a biology that created internal torment,” she says.
Was it really bad biology? When you read about Courtney and all the women who shaped her life, what comes into view is a legacy of living for now. Genes don't make choices, and choices are the things that have haunted Courtney and her foremothers. The story begins in the 1920s when a woman named Elsie gave birth to a baby girl named Paula Fox, who became the acclaimed author of dozens of popular books. But before Paula was a famous writer, she was a horribly neglected child raised by an “unfathomably cruel” mother. Elsie dropped Paula in and out of orphanages and veered in and out of her life like a destructive tornado. For Elsie, Paula was merely an obstacle, a distraction from the things she really wanted in life.
Naturally, Paula grew up confused about womanhood. She fooled around, made bad choices, and gave birth to baby Linda while in her teens. Paula quickly gave Linda away to a woman named Louella, who was in the middle of her own troubled storyline of rejection and bad behavior. For the next eighteen years Louella kept a safe distance between herself and her adopted little girl who longed for love. Indeed, Linda's entire childhood was