This week marked nine years since Jeremy died.

We were together for nineteen years, and I still can’t quite grasp where all that time went. It passed in a blur of ordinary days and everyday routines, full of love and laughter, but also of deadlines and to-do lists, of making ends meet, of being tired, of planning for a future we thought we had. And then, life completely and irrevocably changed. Cancer came, and even though Jeremy did everything to heal from it, it ravaged his body and two years later, he was gone.

It’s something I carry with me always, that deep knowing of how quickly life can turn, how time is never quite as abundant as we believe it to be.

And now, as I approach my 50th birthday in just six weeks, I find myself looking at time a little differently. Half a century lived. I say it slowly, letting it settle into my bones, my heart, my very being. Half a century! I’m now closer to death than I am to my birth, and while that’s not something I say with fear, it is something I say with clarity. It isn’t meant to be bleak, it’s just the truth.

I’d go so far as to say that this realisation is a gift, because I want to be intentional with whatever time I have left. I want to stop putting joy on hold or waiting for things to feel just right. I want to say yes when I want to do something and no when I don’t. I want to stop living like I’ll get a second chance at today.

If we really think about it, we know that time is not just precious, it is, in fact, sacred. And yet so often, we treat it like it will always be there, like we can keep deferring our dreams, like we can postpone our peace.

But can we really?

The truth is that my time is running out. And so is yours. Now that the realisation has landed, how might you choose to live differently?