As I was leaving work on a Wednesday night back in October of 2011, I received a phone call that my mother had slipped and fallen down in the rain and she was being taken by ambulance to the hospital.  She had broken her femur and her hip and was going to be taken into emergency surgery.  Thursday she spent almost seven hours in surgery having her entire hip replaced.  She came out of surgery late that night and they put her directly into the cardiology unit of the hospital because during the surgery she was having heart palpitations and the doctors were concerned about her heart.  As I sat with her that night holding her hand in the hospital room as she tried to wake up from the anesthesia I was flooded with the feeling that we should never take things in life for granted. 

Never take the people you love for granted.  Never take the time you have to spend with those people for granted.  Never take your health for granted.  Never take the people you love’s health for granted.  Never take this life and the time we have in this life for granted.  Life can change in a moment.  Things can be taken away from us in a moment, whether its money or things, or your health, or the people we love.  All of it can be taken away from us and sometimes there is little we can do to stop it. 

But we can always take every moment we get to love and to live and be truly focused on how grateful we are for it.  That is the trick to avoid taking things for granted. BE GRATEFUL!  Treasure your relationships with the people in your life.  Tell them you love them every time you see them.  Express appreciation openly.  Be grateful for whatever time you have to learn and grow from others.   Focus on being grateful for everything and everyone you have in your life.

I could have lost my mom that night when she fell and I could have lost her that next day in surgery.  I cannot even begin to express how grateful I am that I did not lose her – I love her so much.  But I’m grateful for the lesson that came from that experience because it taught me never to take anyone I love for granted.

And its not just the people we love we shouldn’t take for granted, but every blessing we have in our lives…for they are just that…blessings…

“Don’t take for granted the things closest to your heart, cling to them as you would your life…For without them, life is meaningless.” – unknown

~Amy Rees Anderson (author of the book “What Awesome Looks Like: How To Excel in Business & Life” )