The Postcard

A wise person once said, “If you want to survive a tragedy, you need a friend.” That proved true for a woman named Janice. When her doctor told her she had cancer and needed a radical mastectomy, she felt devastated. She said, “It was impossible to comprehend what was about to happen. I cried hysterically. I could not imagine what it would be like. It was so inconceivable that I was actually living this nightmare.” A week before her surgery, she almost decided to cancel the surgery, give up, and die. Only one thing kept her from doing so. That evening she thumbed through the day’s mail. She noticed a postcard from a close friend. Her friend wrote just one word on the postcard, scrawled in big letters. The one word was “LIVE!” Janice taped the postcard on her bathroom mirror and left it there through her surgery, the chemo, the radiation, and all the follow-up visits. She later said, “Whenever I felt tempted to give up I would look at that word and repeat it again and again and again. Live! Live! Live!” And you know what? She did.