LIVE. LAUGH. LOVE.

When I was in college one year I signed up for some Summer classes. The college was quiet and mostly empty during the Summer months and I spent most of my time in the huge library with its air conditioning to beat the July heat. It felt like every book in the whole world was there and I took my time going through the shelves looking at as many as I could.

One day in particular I found two very different books there. One was "Mein Kampf" by Adolf Hitler and the other was “The diary of a young girl” by Anne Frank. Being curious I decided to look through them both in my usual fashion, skipping through the pages and looking for passages and paragraphs that would speak to me. I soon found that Hitler's manifesto was not only muddled and confusing but also full of ideas that chilled my soul and felt like poison in my veins. After a short while I tossed it aside and started to read Anne Frank's diary. In page after page I felt her wit, wisdom, spirit, love, and joy. She filled me with hope for humanity, for myself, and for this world. I grieved that she had been taken from us so soon by Hitler's Holocaust, but I thanked God that her writings had survived.

Anne Frank wrote that "Nobody need wait a single moment before starting to improve the world." When I started to write myself then I knew whose book's example I wanted to follow. I wanted to share ideas that uplifted the hearts and souls of others. I wanted to write of God's love for us and our love for each other. I wanted to write words that brought more love, more joy, and more light into this world.

Each of you is writing a book too. This book is called "Your Life" and you write it with every thing you do and every choice you make. Make it a great story, one that uplifts, inspires, and makes this world a better place. Make it a love story so beautiful that even Heaven smiles.