Live

I can't believe it is the end of another year!  When I think back on this year, knowing all that has happened, all that I have truthfully written, I know that this blog book will be one that I won't open for a long, long time.  I still have not gone back to look at the last two books we have published, it's just too raw and painful.  In some ways it feels like the last few years have flown by.  Other times, it feels like an entire lifetime has passed in the past three years.

Last night, while talking with Ashlee and Russ after the kids were in bed (but not before they actually fell asleep-- cousin talk is the funnest), Randy randomly cut off our conversation by saying, "I don't think Tyson remembers a time where Caden didn't have cancer."  We were so stunned, it was just so random.  He then told us his thought process and how he came to that conclusion (it was still random, but understandable once he explained it), but he's right: Tyson was only four when Caden was diagnosed.  You don't really remember much before then, if anything, so cancer has always been a part of Tyson's remembered life.  It has been a good, happy life, but that all of it has been tinged with cancer, makes me a little sad.  Caden is more than his cancer.

On one hand, I am more than happy to say goodbye to 2016.  We have come to blows with cancer twice this year- more fights than any other year.  The first three months of 2016 were the hardest, most heinous of any we have ever had to endure, with the following three months being a different kind of difficult.  But knowing that the cancer is getting more aggressive makes me hesitant, and just a little terrified to welcome 2017 with open, eager arms.

So, instead of fretting about the unknown, I am going to follow this counsel:

Think about your particular assignment at this time in your life.

~It may be to get an education ~It may be to rear children ~It may be to be a grandparent ~It may be to care for and relieve the suffering of someone you love ~It may be to do a job in the most excellent way possible ~It may be to support someone who has a difficult assignment of their own.  

Our assignments are varied and they change from time to time.  
Don't take them lightly.  
Give them your full heart and energy.  
Do them with enthusiasm.  
Do whatever you have to do with your whole heart and soul.

I don't want to drive up to the pearly gates in a shiny sports car, wearing beautifully tailored clothes, my hair expertly coiffed, and with long, perfectly manicured fingernails.  I want to drive up in a station wagon that has mud on the wheels from taking kids to scout camp.  I want to be there with a smudge of peanut butter on my shirt from making sandwiches for a sick neighbor's children.  I want to be there with a little dirt under my fingernails from helping to weed someone's garden.  I want to be there with children's sticky kisses on my cheeks and the tears of a friend on my shoulder.  I want the Lord to know I was really here and that I really lived.
           - Marjorie P. Hinckley

 So, I'm going to live this amazing, heartbreakingly beautiful life with all of my heart and soul.  And I mean really live!