If you were to ask me what I'm thankful for, I would probably tell you that I'm thankful for my family, my dog and my job. And all of that is true. But if I were to really be honest, what comes to mind is simply, "I'm thankful for life." There are so many times--even just over the past several years--that I could have died and didn't.
In the summer of 2011 I was trying to train for a sprint triathlon. (I eventually gave up on that idea because I'm so bad at swimming--and not great at running either!) I was trying to beat my previous times biking on the Huckleberry Trail, but I had left late and it didn't look like I'd be able to make it home before dark. My dad called and told me to call him when I made it to the mall and he would pick me up so that I wouldn't have to cross Pepper's Ferry Rd in the dark. (This was before they built the pedestrian bridge and also before I had bike lights.) When I got to the mall I didn't call my dad and decided to go ahead and bike all the way home because I wanted to know my time for biking that distance. When I got to Pepper's Ferry I looked both ways and was about to run across, and I heard this voice in my head saying, "Look again." I looked to my left and right there was a gray car driving with its lights off! That scared me a bit, but I'm embarrassed to say I still crossed the road a minute later and biked the rest of the way home. My parents were obviously mad that I biked home without calling them!
There was the time in 2012 that I cut myself badly and my arm wouldn't stop bleeding for a couple hours. I was exhausted, so I went to bed and hoped I'd wake up in the morning.
There are all the times my depression tried to kill me--really, too many times to keep track of. I wrote this passage in my journal during a hard time last October that I think pretty accurately describes how I was feeling.
"I have been forgotten like one who is dead; I have become like a broken vessel. For I hear the whispering of many--terror on every side!--as they scheme together against me, as they plot to take my life. But I trust in you, O Lord; I say, 'You are my God.' My times are in your hand; rescue me from the hand of my enemies and from my persecutors!" Psalm 31:12-15
In 2015 I got Cdiff, a bacterial infection that a lot of people die from. I couldn't eat most foods because they caused internal bleeding. Then I had an allergic reaction to the antibiotic and was having trouble breathing. I remember my dad telling me, "You're stuck between a rock and a hard place because you could die from not being able to breathe, but [if you stop the antibiotic] the infection could also kill you." I ended up switching to an antibiotic that I've heard kills MRSA, and it took two rounds of that to get rid of the infection.
Some people think that 26 is really young, and in a sense I guess it is. But I feel fortunate to have lived this long when I might not have. In the past three years I've had four friends (technically two of them were more of acquaintances) pass away, and they were all in their early to mid-twenties. A lot of people live like they're immortal, and I guess there can be benefits to that. It can be fun having adventures and taking risks. And when you assume you'll live a long time, you're more likely to plan for the future. But I've seen how fragile my life and the lives of others can be, and I don't want to take life for granted.
