Kircher Cliffs, Big Sky, Montana

Nothing is ever quite certain in life. Plans change. What you thought would be the greatest moment of your life can pale. What should have been drab might turn out to be stellar.

Before I met my husband, I thought I lived a spontaneous life. Back then I was living out of the back of my truck in the summer and dirt-bagging at my parent’s cabin at Crystal Mountain in winter. I didn’t earn much, but I didn’t need much. I was always ready at a moment’s notice for whatever adventure came my way.

Or so I thought.

After spending time with John–when I knew I might be falling in love with him–it was his spontaneity that most intrigued me. John lived like a man on a mission. He knew he would need a liver transplant someday. He figured it would be hard, and maybe he wouldn’t live through it. So he took every single moment and stretched, folded and rearranged it to its fullest.

We could all learn a lot from John. Not a single moment is wasted on this man.

When he first got sick, we expected to go to the Mayo Clinic for a few days and return home to await the transplant. Boy were we ever naive. We had no idea the challenge that lay ahead. The night after his first endoscopy, when I cancelled our flight home and prepared to hunker down near the eye of the storm, it was late in the day when I changed hotels.

We’d been staying at a place near the clinic–somewhere close to his doctor’s office, where we could make the daily appointment rounds as we joined the queue for organ donation and figured out the system. But something went wrong during that endoscopy.

He woke up, but didn’t rally. Where was my strong John? We had a flight to catch. We had a life to continue living back at home. And here he was, sick and hurting and telling me he wanted to stay in the hospital that night where they could look after him. He was transferred to the hospital by ambulance while I went to the hotel to check out and take a taxi to a place near him.

As I stood in the elevator, pushing two suitcases and wondering how he was doing back in his hospital room as I frantically changed our flight and hotel arrangements, another woman joined me on the next floor. She glanced at my bags, then at her watch. It was 6pm. She smiled. “It’s late to be checking out,” she said. She was trying to be nice.

I felt a sword in my throat. I knew that if I looked at her I would cry. If I even glanced in her general direction I would break down. This was all too soon. John and I had only been married a year. This liver transplant thing wasn’t supposed to happen yet. We needed a few good years. Our adventures had only started. I tried not to look at this woman, her shiny face a picture of Midwest kindness.

I lifted my chin slightly, my eyebrows making strident arches above my bloodshot eyes, and said, “change of plans.” But I wasn’t as brave and strong as I’d like to pretend I was. My voice wavered. My chest heaved. She knew enough to say she was sorry and to help me stare down the lighted buttons above the door.

As I exited that elevator and headed towards the taxi cabs waiting to transport loved ones with downcast eyes, the earth shifted below my feet. My plans had changed. Our plans. Things would never be the same.

And so when John texted me today to tell me that he’d changed plans and would indeed be joining me in Big Sky for a few days, I was thrilled. I’m here in Big Sky on my book tour and had planned on returning home tomorrow. But not so. My spontaneous husband is now joining me here.

That is the miracle: that my husband is still alive and that we are still being spontaneous. When I say that I’m grateful for every single day I have with him, I’m not kidding. I really am.