What About the Other Two-Thirds?

According to Wikipedia (my favorite website), the world average life expectancy is 67.2 years old. This fact seems random. This fact gets overlooked. If I were to live to 67 years old, I will have lived almost one-third of my life at this moment. That puts those numbers into perspective. Obviously, this is setting aside the concept that at any moment I could get run over by a bus. I'm not sure what I've done with my one-third. I have gone to school. I have gotten good grades (or at least I am happy with them). I have cried, laughed, loved, and lived, but have I lived like I was living one-third of my life? I cannot even count the amount of times I have said, "Oh that can wait. It doesn't have to be done today." My thoughts today are not to focus negativly towards how I have lived, but to hope for how I will live. I finished the book I was reading, The Irresistable Revolution, and it has me thinking about how I want my life to look. I could very easily spend my life normally and get my degree and enjoy my job and live out a happy life that looks pleasing. I also see a choice B though. I see a choice that is quite scary to be honest. It holds no promise of nice things or comfort. It holds no promise of living life as I planned. I obviously don't have a good idea of what this looks like, but I know it by its surrender. I'm turning over the idea of dying to ones self in my head. That is a very foreign concept to most and to those that think on it, it is a difficult concept. I know my dreams and desires for my life, but the thing I have a hard time grasping is that those are too small for God's big picture. The problem is, I have trouble letting go and having faith in God to let Him run the show. I'm stuck with the question, "God, what does dying to myself really look like?" Yes, I know that it means pursuing God and letting Him work through me instead of doing it all on my own, but I think there is more to it then that. I think it has something to do with letting Him shatter the picture I have of the life I know and love. I'm mindful of Jeremy Riddle's song Sweetly Broken and the lyrics...

At the cross You beckon me
You draw me gently to my knees, and I am
Lost for words, so lost in love,
I’m sweetly broken, wholly surrendered

This makes me think of the tax collector Matthew in Matthew 9:9-"As Jesus passed on from there, He saw a man named Matthew sitting at the tax office. And He said to him, 'Follow Me.' So he arose and followed him."

I'm thinking Matthew had lived at least one-third to one-half his life at this point and had a choice in that moment. A choice to live his next half like his last or to leave it all behind and follow Jesus. I know that he never once regreted his choice. That must have been hard though. The song above paints a picture of being broken only to be made new. Matthew had to let Jesus shatter his old life to give him new life. Tonight, I'm pondering what it means to be sweetly broken and wholly surrender my life's plans to God's design.