I'll take those days.

I was so glad to see her today. The patient I had talked to last week who was in a very dark place. The woman who could not get out of the bed, so paralyzed by her predicament...so depressed by her diagnosis....put under by the way her life had been forever changed.
Today she was in a better place. She was learning to live with it. She was beginning to wander out of the darkness a day or two at a time. She was smiling at me. It was great to see.

I also have been waiting for a call from another woman who has not left her house since finding out about her stage IV diagnosis. She cannot function. She cannot bring herself to call me, to reach out to a fellow sister in the fight. She is in the darkest of places. Refusing to get help, refusing to accept love and caring, refusing to live.

I have given the first lady my pep talk. Told her all the things I will say to the second woman when and if she calls. Things like how you still have your life to live. How you cope with a new "normal". How you must not let the darkness over take you. How you have to fight, fight, fight...never give in...always have hope. How you can live a long and full life even with this disease following you around.

And if that doesn't help them. If either women cannot get past their circumstances and get on with the business of the battle, I have one more thing to say to them: if I could, I'd take the days. I'll take all the days you are wasting. All that living you are not doing. Every hour you spend poorly by feeling so sorry for yourself...give them to me. I will live them for you. I will add those days to my own. I will spend them wisely, cherishing each moment, recognizing each day for the gift that it is. I will use that day you spent locked in your room to ride in a convertible, kayak on a lake, go out to a great restaurant, cruise up the waterway on a boat,
walk down the street with my husband, sit outside in the early evening with a glass of wine and Michael Buble on the stereo, and take my daughter shopping for shoes. I promise, if I could only have your wasted days, I would see to it that they were spent with so much purpose and enthusiasm and love, it would make you want them back.

Really, my friends, life is precious, days are like diamonds. And I want all my time to be well and meaningfully spent. So I say to anyone who makes it a habit of wasting your days.....please don't. To those of us who live with the fact that our days may be limited.....that time is golden.
Honor God and spend it fully.

"Better is one day in your courts than a thousand elsewhere." Psalm 84:10