My 14-year-old daughter Gabby just had surgery to repair a labral hip tear as a result of a sports injury. We had six months of trying to diagnose the problem, one failed surgery due to an allergy to a drug, and finally a successful surgery this week.

She has missed her volleyball season, basketball season and now her softball season, sitting the bench cheering on her team. For a 14 year old that isn’t so easy to do. She is entitled to be sad about this, I know I would have been, HOWEVER, you have to stop it at some point and say….you weren’t diagnosed with a disease. Right?

My point today is to say that I take things for granted. The health of my family is the most recent add to that list. How many of us wake up and say, thank you God for letting me go to the bathroom without using a walker. Thank you for allowing me to see well enough to drive my car to work. Thank you for the fact that I am not taking medications to deal with depression. Sometimes we don’t appreciate something until we don’t have it anymore and that should stop.

Take a minute each day and be grateful for the things that you just expect to have.

Big THANK YOU to Dr. Chris Shaw and his rockstar staff. They did an amazing job with Gabby and caring for our entire family during the process. Today, they move on to another patient and I’m not really sure if they understand the impact they have on the people they help, so hopefully, this note lands with them.

I used to live at the base of Snowbird in Salt Lake City and I remember sitting at stop lights just looking around in awe of the scenery. Then I noticed that I was the only one doing it. When you have something great you tend to forget how great it is until maybe it’s not there. Look around today and take notice.

A special thanks to our good friend Dr. Derek Miller in Joplin for sticking by us through the entire process. You are incredible.