Today we got word that a friend of ours, who we love and admire greatly, has been diagnosed with stage four lung cancer which has spread throughout her body. It came as such a shock to hear the news about her because we ran into her and her husband just a few weeks ago and she seemed perfectly healthy and happy as ever. No one could have ever guessed that this life deadly illness was growing inside of her body.

To let you know a little about her: She is one of the kindest and happiest people you would ever meet. She is always smiling and laughing and she always has an aura of joy about her. She and her husband are about as cute of a couple as you would ever find. They are both in their 60s but they dance the jitterbug together as if they were in their 20s. We just adore them and my husband and I hope we will be as cute together as they are when we are in our 60s.

Hearing the news about her illness today is heartbreaking and there are many people who love her who are praying for a miracle on her behalf.  I don’t know if a miracle will be granted and she will be permitted to remain on this earth, or if her Heavenly Father is waiting to welcome her back home on the other side, but what I do know is that if there was ever a person who could return to her Heavenly Father walking tall and proud for all she had accomplished in this life, and for the way she has conducted herself, and for the lives she has touched, it is this gal.

And as I sit here tonight to write to all of you I can’t help but recognize that what is happening to her could be happening to any one of us at any time as well. And we have to ask ourselves, if we got that news and found out our time to return to the other side was forthcoming, would we be proud of our accomplishments? Would we be comfortable with the way we conducted ourselves? Would we have touched the lives of others the way we should? I would guess that as most of us ask ourselves those questions we would come up with a few areas we would want time to improve…

The fact is that we never know how long we will have on this earth. It could be minutes or it could be years. So we must take advantage of every day that we are given to try and live it in a way we will feel most proud. We must try and prioritize our time in such a way that we are giving it to those endeavors that will matter most to us at the point we are faced with our own mortality. We must set aside and stop worrying about all the things that really don’t matter. If something is bothering us, we must ask ourselves, “If my last day on earth were going to be tomorrow would I really care about this?” We need to make sure we live each day in a way that our loved ones always know how much we care about them. We need to try and touch the lives of others and we should use your talents to accomplish great things. And most important…we all need to grab our sweethearts and dance the jitterbug with them…life is short…we must live it well.

~Amy