My birthday wish for you

Today is my birthday. And as I age, each year I tend to become more nostalgic, like the character in the Disney movie, Inside Out 2, Nostalgia.

She’s that soft, still voice that helps you reminisce about your past and remember what truly matters.

I remember the best moments of my life. They aren’t the Pinterest-perfect moments or the highlight reels you post online—the real ones.

Eating popsicles at the park with my children on a random Tuesday. Laughing with friends while sharing a home-cooked meal. Singing karaoke with my siblings. Taking a stroll after dinner with my husband.

It’s all these small moments that create your life. That gives it meaning. That informs who you are.

Today, as I turn another year older, here are the lessons my nostalgia is teaching me.

Lesson One: There are more days behind me now than ahead of me. Make each one count.

I find myself asking: Am I living intentionally? Or am I sleepwalking through my one precious life, waiting for some future version where everything feels easier?

The truth is, growth doesn’t happen in comfort. It happens in the stretch. So I intentionally do things that challenge me, that push me outside my comfort zone. Because as long as I have breath, I feel called to serve—to love deeply, to help people break the cycles keeping them stuck.

Lesson Two: Learn from the dying.

Over the years, I’ve had the profound honor of sitting with people at the end of their lives and with families who just lost a loved one. If you want to know what really matters, spend time with people who are leaving.

Here’s what I hear. No one wishes they’d worked more, watched more Netflix, or finally hit that perfect number on the scale.

But they do have regrets. Always the same two.

First: Living the life others wanted for me instead of the one I wanted for myself. The people who played it safe. Who followed the script their parents wrote, their culture demanded, their fear dictated. Who spent decades being who they thought they should be instead of who they actually were.

Second: Not nurturing and repairing my most important relationships. The apologies never given. The conversations never had. The love never expressed. The grudges held too long, the silence stretched too far, the walls built too high. The belief that there would always be more time—until suddenly, there wasn’t.

Lesson Three: Two things you can never get back once they’re gone—time and people.

The moments that feel small right now—the Sunday morning coffee with your partner, the late-night talk with your teenager, the phone call to your aging parent—those become the moments you treasure when everything else fades.

So here’s my challenge to you, on my birthday:

Literary award-winning poet and author Ocean Vuong wrote that the most dangerous thing we can do is actually live our lives. Not survive them. Not scroll through them. But to truly, courageously live them.

Poet Mary Oliver asked: “What will you do with this one precious life?”

So, I ask you, what will you do with yours?

Will you be brave and live your best life with the time you have left on this earth?

Will you heed to that small still voice that been calling you to do something different in your life?

Will you take that courageous step to deepen the most important relationships in your life?

What will you do with this one precious life?