My heart is sad today Lord, and I don’t quite know why. My life is happy enough, and still has so much potential, but I am getting older, and some days I feel it more. I realized today that more of my life is behind me than ahead of me, and there is still so much I want to do. But there's no guarantee to any specific life-span, after all.

I often think of some of the young cancer patients I have taken care of in my 30 years working at the hospital. They never expected to leave this earth so soon - or even be sick. They were so young, with their whole lives ahead of them. It seemed so sad and so wrong. They had hopes and dreams, just like everyone, but their journey here came to its end before they got to do very many of those things. It almost seemed like their lives were taken away before they even had a chance to live them. How can this be? And here I am, still around after all these years, and I have had so many chances. I did get some of my dreams, and even now I still have some time, some more chances for life.

I don’t understand how these things go. How can lives be so different? I know the New Thought ministers say that our souls choose the lives we have. But how can that be?

Did these young people’s souls choose to leave so soon? And to suffer the anguish and sadness that they must have suffered here? Many of them were very brave. Some of the most heroic people I've ever known in my life were my cancer patients. They taught me a lot about life. I can still see their faces, and I can remember many of their names, and their families.

There is so much in this life I don’t understand, so much we can't control. Dear Lord please speak to this, and help me understand. What does it all mean? I am not anybody special; why am I still here? I know there must be a reason, a purpose. Why am I here, and for what reason did my soul choose this life I have chosen?