I love inspirational quotes, novel trinkets, signs, and pictures with encouraging words that remind us of our strength and abilities, the beauty of nature and life, and to “stop and smell the roses,” per se. Of course, the Live. Love. Laugh. paraphernalia was of my favorites, but as they started appearing everywhere, the novelty, impact, and message seemed diluted - at least for me. 

Live. Enjoy life. Do things that excite you. Do things that are important to you. Do things that make you feel alive.

Love. Appreciate those around you. Love people. Allow yourself to be loved. Love things. Love life.

Laugh. Don’t worry about the things that don’t matter, minor mishaps, misgivings, or that the dog just ate your brand new pair of shoes or that you spilled coffee all over yourself on your way to work. Smile because it’s really alright and doesn’t really matter.

Live. Love. Laugh. There are so many ways to interpret those simple words that inspire so many to shell out $5 or $25 to display it somewhere.

But when a tragedy became a miracle, those meaning of those words returned to exactly those words: Live. Love. Laugh. 

Two Sunday mornings ago, our small family packed up be began our journey north to say goodbye to a family member who was declared dead on Friday night after a tragic car accident. My understanding is that because he was an organ donor, the hospital hooked him up to life support machines to keep his organs oxygenated for 24 hours while matches were made for his organs. On Saturday afternoon, the machines began to register a bit of brain activity but we were told not to have any hope. The doctors would “give him another 24 hours” before harvesting his organs. What were they waiting for? They were giving him 24 hours to do what exactly? Finally, on Sunday, a CT scan of his brain was ordered; never mind that it wasn’t done sooner. The brain scan showed that he could hear. When you hear people talking about giving away your organs in a few hours, the last thing you want to be doing is lying there waiting for it to happen, so you sit up and that’s exactly what he did.

I am deliberately leaving out details for the sake of privacy, but I am glad to be able to say that as I write, the doctors have been talking about recovery. When you thought you lost someone, that word is a huge miracle.

Live. Love. Laugh. Those are ideas you never had to remind to our modern day Lazarus, but in the fight of his life, I want to cheer him on to Live some more. Love some more. Laugh some more.