Lemons, curve balls, and bowling balls

I apologize for my absence….actually, no I don’t.  If you recall in my very first post I made it very clear I’m not much of a blogger.

And so we commence into the holiday festivities with feasting and singing and laughter and mirth…except not really this year.  A week ago my 10 day old niece was rushed to Vanderbilt Childrens Hospital, the thinking was that she had pneumonia, strep B, and sepsis, and the prognosis was not good.  When she arrived at Vanderbilt they immediately recognized that she had a heart defect.  She had heart surgery on Monday and is still there, waiting for her respiratory condition to level out so she can come home.  As my family was out of town on a business trip to Dallas and I was home I was there with my brother and sister in-law, I drove them to Nashville and stayed with them till my mom arrived.

It has truly been a sobering and thankful thanksgiving and beginning to the holiday season as I am reminded how fragile life is.  On one hand I am beyond words that can express how thankful I am for the life of my niece and that her prognosis now is far, far better than it was a week ago, but on the other hand the realization that we are a mere vapor that can quickly vanish without a moment’s notice,  settles in slowly and I am forced to reconsider just HOW thankful I am for everyone and everything around me.  It forces me to reconsider how often I acknowledge the existence of those around me.  It forces me to reconsider those things that I so foolishly consider of utmost importance to me, but are really quite meaningless.

We decorated our Christmas tree today, this was unusual for many reasons.  First and foremost being that we never get a tree until December, today is the 27^th of November. The second unusual reason is that we only got the darn thing yesterday and it’s already up and decorated, usually it sits outside for the better part of a week before we haul it in and then it sits bare for a day or two, and THEN does it get decorated.  But we got our tree yesterday because we didn’t know what a week from now (the first Saturday in December, the date we usually get a tree) would hold for us; would Lilly be home? Would we be in Nashville? Would we have our families thanksgiving dinner that Saturday that has been postponed?

I sit and stare quietly at the tree, it is very nearly perfect, and I am reminded that life is fragile;  I told a friend last week as Lilly’s life seemed to hang in the balance that “I feel like my life is cracking all around me.”

Yes, life is fragile, but this does not mean to walk in fear, not at all, it means…

Enjoy the little things

Enjoy the big things

Laugh often

Smile much

Sing out

Live life

Live well

Think hard

Make an impact

Impart a vision

Glorify God

As we drove to Nashville on Saturday night, now knowing what the next day would hold I looked at my brother and shared with him an analogy I share with my patients.
“Sometimes life throws you lemons, and you get to make lemonade, right?  Then there are times life throws curve balls at you, and the best you can do is just swing, swing hard, swing away, and just try……..Then there are the times that life chucks bowling balls at you and then you just run and hide and try to get out of the way….I’m still trying to figure out which of these three circumstances fits us right now.”

Life is fragile, but God isn’t, so dance and laugh and enjoy life.