You only have this second

I'm writing tonight with a troubled heart.  While we were at the bowling alley today, I got a text from my friend and PE teacher at our school that one of our Kindergarten teachers was in a really bad car wreck last night.  We just got word through phone calls, texts and school email about it.  She was rear-ended by a drunk driver and pushed into a tree.  The tree hit on her side and she is in Vanderbilt in critical condition with a what they're calling a massive brain injury plus some other broken bones and internal injuries.  The last email we got from our guidance counselor from school said that this next week was touch and go and the dr.'s didn't have a prognosis.  To me that means they don't even know if she's going to live or die.  My friend, is in her late twenties, has been married for a few years and was on  maternity leave last year with her first child is now hovering between life and death.  The driver, a young woman, probably early to mid-twenties was uninjured and is now in jail.  In an second, both of their lives are changed forever.  Both of them young and we all assume have their whole life ahead of them, but now because of one girl's stupid decision to drink and drive, now both of their lives will be filled with struggles.  My friend's physical struggles outweigh the drunk driver's by a long shot, but the driver will have to face the possibility that she could be responsible for killing someone if my friend dies.  Also, if she lives, they don't know what she'll be able to do and not do.  Thinking she'll be able to still teach Kindergarten seems like an impossibility at this point, but miracles do happen and our whole school has asked everybody they know to pray for her.  But that's a possibility that the driver will have to face as well.  She's taken away my friend's ability to make a living.  She's taken away her ability to take care of her baby boy, to be a wife to her husband.  How do you live with that?  Hopefully, she's remorseful and she'll learn from this horrific mistake she's made. 
I guess my brain is just swirling around worrying about her and thinking what if it were me?  I was thinking as I was driving home from the bowling alley on the interstate, we only have the second we're in right now.  The one before it is in the past and the one after it is the future.  Once that second is gone, it's gone.  We don't get it back.  And I could be in an accident right now and not make it home.  It could so easily be any of us.  We don't know how much time we have.  I've heard that over and over, so I'm trying to do what I can to appreciate the seconds I'm given every day.  I'm trying not to worry about how clean the house is.  I'm walking outside and feeling the breeze when ever I think about it.  I watch the birds and listen to the bugs sing in the evening.  I'm trying to appreciate being with Cassidy and appreciating every thing she says, except when it has a 'Jr. High attitude' wrapped around it.  I can't let those slip by.

When Shannon walked out of the house tonight to go hang out with some of her friends, it struck me that it so easily could be her laying in that hospital bed.  For the first time ever, I watched her drive off and was truly afraid for a few moments that she might not come back.  I wasn't this bad the first time she pulled out of the driveway by herself to go to Publix for me to get some milk.  I was very aware that she walked out the door and I didn't get a chance to say, "I love you."  We both just said, "See you later."  I always tell her when she walks out the door.  I guess I was hyper-aware of it tonight with my friend on my mind.  So as I end this post, I hope for you reading this long life, happiness and use all your seconds to do good things, be good to each other and to your self, because you don't know how many seconds you have left.