Today is the best day of my life.
Three weeks ago, I sat on the couch in my family room and wrapped my arms around my three children, ages 9 years, 2 years and 6 weeks. I told my eldest it was the best day of my life, to which she wondered why. “It’s a summer morning,” I told her, “and I get to spend the day with my children.”
Almost spontaneously, I dressed them all in jeans and white shirts, piled them in the car and grabbed my camera. We drove to Harn Park and I took their pictures. I remember thinking how glad I was that I was able to get good pictures with all three of them together since baby Bridgy was still so new.
At midnight that same evening I reached my hand into Bridgy’s bassinet and felt her burning with fever. I flew out of bed and to the emergency room, and by 2 a.m. she was bent over on a hospital bed having a spinal tap. We spent the next 72 hours in the hospital waiting on tests to come back to tell us whether or not she had bacterial meningitis. She did not.
I live up the street from a man whose brother died in one of the towers on 9-11, and a girl I went to college with at Southern Nazarene University in Bethany died in the Oklahoma bombing. Some people I go to Sunday School with have a little boy who is fighting cancer, and just yesterday, a woman posing as a potential love interest allegedly lured an innocent man to his death my drowning.
Every Day is the Best Day of My Life
So many terrific tragedies in close proximity to us all. It makes me think twice about reading the paper. I wonder, sometimes, if that brand new, black, shiny Volvo that just cut me off in traffic has any clue how hard I am holding on to life. How come he has not figured out that at any moment he can just be going along without a care in the world and find the sky falling on him the next? I am desperate to make today the best day of my life. And, everyday is today.