Thursday, May 14, 2009

LIFE: Handle With Care

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I wanted to give you another great read: Handle with Care by Jodi Picoult.

It is about a family with a child borth with OI (brittle bone disease). The infant had 7 broken bones in utero, 3 more from the birthing, then got into breating trouble and they had to cut her open and broke some more bones. Sounds like a real upper, huh? Really, it is a good reminder that others suffer from things we can't even comprehend while we are whining about
small stuff.

Case in point. Yesterday at the Free Medical Clinic where I volunteer on Wednesdays. The director, Kathy Bbbaxley, followed me to my car to share the fact that her daughter Amanda just got the results from her test to see if she has the gene that will render her completely helpless....she does. Her Dad is in the last stages (and it aint prettyville) her uncle and grandfather died the same excrusiating death from it....now just finished nursing school in January, just back from volunteering as a nurse in Africa, just engaged to marry the love of her life, she gets the death sentence. Unbelievable. Unexplainable. Just NOT Fair!

But the good news is the fiance...."manned up" still wants to marry her (over parental objections) and the wedding plans have begun.

More good news....she has 25 years before the disease should onset.....at age 50.

It blows my mind BUT you know we all have a death sentence....none of us knows when or how our time will be up. She has time to pack a lot of living into her 25 years and not fiddle-fart it away like most of us have done.

So consider your life today....are you using it, loving it, thanking God for every minute of health you have, having fun, showing those around you how much you love them?

I love the Last Lecture of Randy Pausch. The professor at Carnegie Mellon who when diagnosed with terminal pancreatic cancer....told us how to live and how to die. If you haven't heard it go to uTube and look for it. It is life changing. I'm going to watch it again and again next month...somehow it is so easy to forget eternity in light of TODAY.

Thanks listening....pray for Amanda, Kathy, Buddy, and Brad the fiance and his family.

To God be the GLORY!

1 comment:

Kimberly said...

Oh, this hurts. I will be praying for them.

Really living life is one of my biggest goals...Walt has done so much to show me that if you want to do something or try something, just dive in and do it. He has helped me be spontaneous...adventures can be planned, but for good measure some of them need to be spontaneous :)

Here's to living every day and not waiting for "someday".