111 days and a secret so simple.

111 days.

One hundred eleven days.

What do you do when life as you know it is numbered. When there is a real timeline, and it ends on a specific date.

What do you do with this one life? This one chance?

Do you keep doing what your doing? Do you do a 180 and change everything? Do you beg God for more time? More chances?

What do you do?

The hourglass is slowly pouring. 2664 beads of sand. One by one the drop down. Once they run out you can’t get them back.

Ever since January 2017 I have been acutely aware that time is a gift and life is too short. However, after setting a date for a surgery that could change everything. I am even more aware of just how much of a gift time really is.

We talk about the positive of surgery because that is the outcome we hope and pray for. What we don’t talk about is the consequences of surgery:

• Memory loss-permanent, she will learn coping mechanisms to overcome this but it will always be a struggle.
• Loss of verbal IQ- spoken and written language will always be a struggle. She will lose some IQ points, we don’t know how many or how severe or if she will gain them back.
• Personality-We have no clue if her personality will stay the same or be completely different for better or worse after surgery and there is no way of knowing.
• A stroke during surgery than can render her unable to communicate.
• Death- while it’s a minuscule chance, this is still brain surgery and there are no guarantees in this life.

There is no way of knowing any of this. We do know that the first 2 things will happen whether we do surgery or not. They will happen slowly, as she continues to have more seizures, more seizures that constantly put her life in jeopardy.

So what do we do with this gift of time we have been given. This gift that we know exactly how many more days until our lives could change for the better or for the worse.

• We celebrate
• We celebrate the time we have.
• We celebrate the small victories.
• We plan.
• We plan for the good days to come.
• We plan for the bad days to come.
• We plan for a future.
• We make adventures
• We create a bucket list.
• We accomplish that list so that even if she isn’t able to enjoy these things later, she will enjoy them now.
• We create lasting memories.
• We enjoy the small moments
• We relish the big moments
• We take pictures…oh so many pictures
• We stay present
• We soak it all in.

We soak it all in. The good, the bad, the ugly we cherish it all because in the end, it’s all those little moments that make up the big moments.

So you want to know the secret?

The secret is simple. These are things we should be doing anyway. The only difference between me and you, is that I am acutely aware of a timeline, but even so that timeline could change in the blink of an eye. Just like your life could change in the blink of an eye.

Nobody is guaranteed tomorrow.

So enjoy life. Enjoy the good days. Enjoy the bad days. Enjoy the ugly days. Take that vacation. Make time for family. Say no less and yes more to the things that bring you joy. Say no more and yes less to the things that drag you down. Hold your loved ones a little closer. Give others grace and give it to yourself even more. Love always.

Throw out the numbers, throw out the timeline and just enjoy each day as it comes. I know I will be.