The Band Perry - If I Die Young

I have been loving this song by The Band Perry. (Listen if you'd like, but it's not entirely necessary to reading the rest of the post. The song is pretty well summed up by its title.)

There are so many reasons I like it. I'll mention just a few and expand on one.

First of all, her voice is fantastic. That is what first grabbed me. The song also does not make me sad at all, but fills me with a bit of peace and almost happiness. That may make me strange or morbid, but I don't care. The lyrics of the song are also fantastically crafted, and one in particular really speaks to me and has made me realize something about myself.

The lead in to the chorus is this: "The sharp knife of a short life. Well, I've had just enough time." The first half is a great description of what it feels like to know a young person who has died. There seems to something especially bitter to human kind about a young person's death. But it is the second half of the above lyrics that send my mind spinning.

While I think of many things related to that lyric, one of the main ones is this: I would rather die young than live a long life and have nothing to show my Creator at its end. In turn, I then wonder what I have to show for my life now. Who have I helped? How have I loved? Bottom line, and what I interpret that little line of this song to mean, is this: no matter how short our days on earth may be, those days are just enough time to live the type of life God desires us to live.

While it is still very sad when a life is drawn to a close at a young age, I don't believe the saddness is entirely tied up in what that person was not able to do (go to college, get married, start a family...). Instead, the saddness in any of our lives is what we are not doing and should be. I hope I can get to the point where I am living out my faith in a way that I can confidently say, "I've had just enough time."

How do you solve a problem like Sophia?

My cat is strange.


Actually, I need to take that back.  She is not strange, she behaves exactly like a cat should behave.  She is a hunter.  She loves the thrill of the chase.  She is not lazy in the least.


But this causes problems, because Sophie is no wild fend-for-yourself animal.  She is a house cat.  She is supposed to lounge around in the sunshine while grooming herself and pretending to ignore the humans around her.  Instead, if she feels bored, she chews on any paper she can find until it is torn to shreds.  My house is covered in little paper schnibbles.


She's very happy when she is able to explore the backyard.  But this has led to some other complications.  I've just cleaned up after the second mole she has killed this summer.  This is added to a list of 3 chipmunks, a bird, and some mice (of which I've lost count).  And that is only what I've witnessed.  There have been unsupervised backyard playtimes where she may have caught many more little creatures.


The hunting might not seem like a problem, but Sophie does not hunt for the kill.  In fact, any animal Sophie has killed was entirely by accident.  Sophie prefers to chase and play with her catches, which means she tortures the little creatures until they either die of trauma from her swatting and biting or manage a narrow escape in who knows what kind of health.


Don't get me wrong.  I'm no PETA member.  I also understand that predators hunt weaker animals.  But my cat is not finishing her duty.  She doesn't go for the kill, just the catch.  I realize that we don't know for certain if animals have feelings, but when I see little beady eyes bulging out and some panicked heavy breathing, I can't help but feel bad for the critter in jeopardy.


So today, as I sit at home avoiding the school work that needs to be done in these 2 short weeks before classes start up again, Sophie's insistence on being an animal driven by predatorial instinct is driving me a little crazy.  I'm seriously considering whether she needs to be sent to the farm to live.


And funny cat, as if she knew what I was just typing, has now crawled into my lap to enjoy a little afternoon cuddle.  Brings to mind the saying, "can't live with 'em, can't live without 'em."