Anne Lamott starts her new book, SMALL VICTORIES, “The worst possible thing you can do when you’re down in the dumps, tweaking, vaporous with victimized self-righteousness, or bored, is to take a walk with dying friends. They will ruin everything for you.”

Anne continues, “First of all friends like this may not even think of themselves as dying, although they clearly are, according to recent scans and gentle doctor’s reports. But no, they see themselves as fully alive.”

Anne takes me back to a two-week period after my cancer diagnosis in 2006 when I was convinced that I would die soon. As my additional tests came back negative, I realized that my demise wasn’t quite as imminent as I had suspected, but those 14 days had impressed upon me a stark reality: eventually I was going to die whether it was in the next day, the next decade or the next century. But, I was going to die.

And that was when I decided to live my life as fully alive. Instead of agonizing over the timing of my demise, I have learned to take each day as it comes with its flowers and rainshowers, challenges and accomplishments.

Anne continues as she talks about her friend Barbara who is in a wheelchair battling Lou Gehrig’s disease, “they ruin your multitasking high, the bath of agitation, rumination, and judgment you wallow in, without the decency to come out and just say anything. They bust you by being grateful for the day, while you obsessed with how thin your lashes have become and how wide your bottoms.”

I am grateful for each and every day. That is all I need to know; God will take care of the rest.

Blessings, my friend,
Agatha