Katie and Nick

(FYI: This has been verified as true on snopes.com and the picture is the actual couple from the story. This is a repost from Chris Cade’s Facebook page)

Katie and Nick were in love and wanted to be married, but with a major complication: On Valentine’s Day in 2002, Katie was diagnosed with a malignant brain tumor. She was in college and wanted to finish, but a year later she was further diagnosed with an inoperable lung tumor.

Even with her complications, with her pain and organ failures, the morphine shots, and having to adjust her dress several times due to weight loss, Katie was determined to continue on with the wedding. Nothing was going to stop her and Nick from sharing their love together in the ceremony they dreamed of.

As you can imagine, it wasn’t a normal wedding…

Katie had an oxygen tube going into her nose throughout the event, and her friends serenaded her while she sat in a wheelchair. With so much pain, she couldn’t stand up for long and frequently sat down to rest. None of this stopped them.

Why?

Because this was the happiest day of their lives, and they knew it. They lived it. The smiles on their faces showed it. After all they’d been through, including how difficult it was just to be married, they were both truly happy.

Katie died 5 days after her wedding.

And after all they’d been through together, Nick had this to say:

“It was wonderful. It was a dream come true. She was the most beautiful angel ever – just caring and selfless, and such an inspiration to everyone. She was always smiling *no matter what happened* no matter what news she got. She was as close to perfect as they come.”

The happiest people aren’t those who always have the best things. The happiest people make the best of what they have.

If Katie and Nick could choose happiness in those most difficult moments, what could you choose to do with your life?

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A Daddy’s Letter to His Little Girl

Dear Cutie-Pie,

Recently, your mother and I were searching for an answer on Google. Halfway through entering the question, Google returned a list of the most popular searches in the world. Perched at the top of the list was “How to keep him interested.”

It startled me. I scanned several of the countless articles about how to be sexy and sexual, when to bring him a beer versus a sandwich, and the ways to make him feel smart and superior.

And I got angry.

Little One, it is not, has never been, and never will be your job to “keep him interested.”

Little One, your only task is to know deeply in your soul—in that unshakeable place that isn’t rattled by rejection and loss and ego—that you are worthy of interest. (If you can remember that everyone else is worthy of interest also, the battle of your life will be mostly won. But that is a letter for another day.)

If you can trust your worth in this way, you will be attractive in the most important sense of the word: you will attract a boy who is both capable of interest and who wants to spend his one life investing all of his interest in you.

Little One, I want to tell you about the boy who doesn’t need to be keptinterested, because he knows you are interesting:

I don’t care if he puts his elbows on the dinner table—as long as he puts his eyes on the way your nose scrunches when you smile. And then can’t stop looking.

I don’t care if he can’t play a bit of golf with me—as long as he can play with the children you give him and revel in all the glorious and frustrating ways they are just like you.

I don’t care if he doesn’t follow his wallet—as long as he follows his heart and it always leads him back to you.

I don’t care if he is strong—as long as he gives you the space to exercise the strength that is in your heart.

I couldn’t care less how he votes—as long as he wakes up every morning and daily elects you to a place of honor in your home and a place of reverence in his heart.

I don’t care about the color of his skin—as long as he paints the canvas of your lives with brushstrokes of patience, and sacrifice, and vulnerability, and tenderness.

I don’t care if he was raised in this religion or that religion or no religion—as long as he was raised to value the sacred and to know every moment of life, and every moment of life with you, is deeply sacred.

In the end, Little One, if you stumble across a man like that and he and I have nothing else in common, we will have the most important thing in common:

You.

Because in the end, Little One, the only thing you should have to do to “keep him interested” is to be you.

Your eternally interested guy,

Daddy

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