cherish what was given.

the now.


i love it and i let the warmth of it wrap around me like a blanket on a chilly evening.


the achingly precious, heart-stoppingly infinite scope of the now.
i'm throwing myself tenfold into scooping it all up. holding it fast in my hands, because it is fleeting and i want to remember this. 


there are so many situations and words that have thrust epiphanies on me in this beautiful thing that is twenty twelve.


yet another came when my dear friend Jessica, posted this excerpt from her memoir Roller Skating With Rickets on the book's facebook page.

A wise friend once told me to "cherish what was given." For those of us living with difficult medical conditions from birth, we can either cherish what we have or lament what we don't. I can dwell on the fact that I count the people I know who are living with cystinosis and are over the age of 40 on one hand, or I can express my immense gratitude at having lived 30 wonderful years. (Psst...my parents were told I'd only live 10. I just read a recent news article that said I'd probably succumb to death before the age of 40. But I haven't even had a mid-life crisis yet!) We don't come with expiration dates. We are given the blessing of life while we have it. Cherish what was given.

Isn't she remarkable?