So what's got you down?

Life doesn’t come with any guarantees about how long we’ll have it, or the quality of it. But hopefully, with the time we are given by God we can make the most of them. Earlier this week, while visiting with my daughter-in-law and granddaughter and son at Duke Hospital I was able to visit with a young lady named Christy. She’s in her mid 30’s and is in the hospital because she got the flu. Now, most people her age would deal with it and recover. But Christy’s not most people.

At age 4 she was diagnosed with cystic fibrosis, which is a terminal disease. Just a few years ago she received a lung transplant that extended her life for a few more years. And now she’s looking at having to undergo additional surgery this year and a kidney transplant next year. So she’s known since she was a girl that without a cure for her disease – and there still is no cure – she wouldn’t live to much past middle age if she made it that far. For most of her life she’s been hooked up to oxygen and has had to take medications, lots of them. She’s spent Christmas and now an Easter in the hospital.

As I talked with her yesterday afternoon I was reminded that not only is life insecure, but it can be really unfair. Here’s a vibrant, attractive young woman, in what should be the prime of her life, dealing with a disease that could render her hopeless and angry. But that wasn’t the case. I could certainly use a dose of her upbeat attitude and positive outlook on life. And she'll be quick to tell you the source of her joy is her relationship with Jesus Christ.

I’m at the point in life, I’m 52, when I spend more time thinking about the rest of my life, and how I hope to live it. And one thing I’ve found is that the older I get, the faster the years go by. And as I listened to Christy talk about her life, the life she has been given, I realized that what counts is not how long we get, but what we do with the time we have.

And whenever that day comes that life here ends, whether it’s somewhat expected or a true surprise, it’s what we did before that moment that really matters.

If you want to know more about either Cystic Fibrosis or Organ Transplants, please follow the links to the left. And you can meet Christy via her blog. She'll pick you up!