Favorite Days

The first time Jake brought me roses was the last day of my first semester student teaching.

I had spent every morning of every school day with a group of incredibly faithful youth. We studied the last half of the New Testament together. My testimony was strengthened, and I grew to truly love those students and the scriptures.

When I look back at that time, those were some of my favorite days.

That semester marked the first few months of our eternal marriage. I had two jobs at the time and Jake had three. We were both going to school full time and adjusting to married life. We lived on Cedar City Main Street.

I remember bringing a limited menu of meals to the parking lot of Canyon View High School for Jake and me to eat together when he had a break from his janitorial duties.

Sometimes we’d search the car for quarters and use whatever change we had to buy a treat. One time we had enough for a pizza. We ate it in the car together and laughed. It was one of my favorite days.

Some of those days during that time were difficult. We were busy and looking forward to life settling down a little. Despite that, we grew to truly love those days. They became some of our favorites.

​Yesterday was chemotherapy treatment #11 which means we’ve spent the past 5 ½ months fighting cancer. It also means we only have one treatment left. Jake’s numbers were great. We grinned the whole appointment. I added our last chemo treatment to our calendar for two weeks from yesterday. We can hardly believe it.

The past six months we have adjusted to a new time of life. We have hand sanitizer and Clorox wipes on hand, we got the flu shot, learned a whole new vocabulary, and we take every other Thursday off work for treatment. Though we don’t have five jobs between us anymore, we still collect quarters for pizza and we still look forward to life settling down a little.

Yesterday, we found another thing these days have had in common with those first few months of marriage days. We’ve grown to truly love them. They’ve become some of our favorites.

Jake and I made lunch together in the kitchen when we got home from treatment. He put his arms around me and said, “I’m going to miss having every other Thursday to just be with you”.

I’m going to miss that too.

I am grateful for every time of life, and I can think of no one else I want to spend each Thursday and every other day with for eternity.
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In two weeks, we’ll ring the bell signifying the end of some hard but good days, and we’ll look forward to the next ones. I have a good feeling that they’ll be some of our favorites.