As best I can tell, it was the fall of 2015 when I first began ending love notes and blog posts with, “We’re in this together…” It was a story entitled, “Remembering what’s good (in me),” and it was filled with 15 reminders of good and purposeful things. Here are five of them.

I’m finding every decade to be better than the one before. Not easier, mind you, but better. Life gets sweeter and richer and more colorful with every passing day. It truly is a gift to be cherished and not despised.

I love my family—Brad, Ian, Gina, my sweet grandkids, every relative by marriage, every extended family member, every person grafted in because God is kind to fill in all the gaps. He is so very kind.

I love telling story, even when there are seasons when it feels like the words are trapped somewhere between my heart and the page. The story hasn’t stopped in those seasons—it’s just being told in a different way. And it forces me to be observant, which I also love. I wonder what would happen in this world if we were all just a little more observant.

My friend asked me what it is I want to succeed at in my life. And what I liked the most about that question was what happened in my heart when she asked it. Certainly, I thought about the list of things I’d like to accomplish with what’s left of my days—but my first thought was about HER life. If in the fully living my life, I have the privilege of pouring into someone else’s life for now and for eternity—even in the smallest way—it will be a rich life. No stage or book deal or world tour needed.

I may have met you when I was four. We may have worked alongside each other or traveled to a foreign land together. Maybe you stayed at CasaRock, or maybe we’ve never met in real life but we’ve had long conversations about this life. Our friendship might have started with a thing called the START Experiment, or we could have found each other for the first time in the Coterie or Binders or Dreamers & Builders or 30 Days of Hustle or #write31days or at Launch Out or through Broken Made Beautiful. No matter where or how or why, we’re in this together. And that’s beautiful.No matter where or how or why, we’re in this together. And that’s beautiful.

Those five things still hold true. And the mantra remains. We’re in this together, and I am for you.

This is day two of my #hopewriterlife, and the theme is #mantra.