“Wonderful book of hope, courage, and perseverance! An inspiration!”
A family member left this extremely kind review of Coby Gent’s book, Make It Count.
Extremely kind. Also, extremely true.
Fighter, overcomer, conqueror, never-give-upper: that was my brother.
Coby and I lived in Florida together for eight years. I stayed afterwards in our house for twelve more years, a total of twenty years in Florida. Way too long, but that is another story.
As I was going through my things and packing up to move to Texas (you never realize just how much junk you have until you go to move it!), I came across a notebook.
This was twelve years after my brother transitioned to Heaven, so I had only the same pictures to look at, the same letters from Coby to read, and other memories that just ran constantly in my head like a broken record.
The notebook contained writings Coby had typed up. It was as if he was speaking to me. It was something new and fresh, and an awesome blessing.
My brother wrote many stories that I never knew about. He just never talked about being sick. He wrote about some of his daily battles to breathe and, well, live, but he never complained. I learned a lot from what Coby had written.
The thing is, he was positive and wrote about times that he enjoyed, great memories that he had, and the “being sick” part was just a part of his life, not his whole life. Not Coby.
He would never be defined by cystic fibrosis.
Coby’s book is a great read. Yes, I am his sister and best friend, but even I was inspired and motivated to make every moment quality, like Coby did.
On days when Coby felt good, there was no stopping him. He would go, go, go until he wore himself out. He just wanted to make every second of his life mean something and not be wasted. He knew he didn’t have as much time as everyone else on this earth, so he lived it up while he was here.
My brother had cystic fibrosis, an incurable disease. My parents were told he might live for three days, three months, or three years. They had no idea because little was known about CF in the early eighties.
My brother lived to be twenty-nine years old and battled every second of his life. But he got up and faced the day with a positive attitude, never the victim, never mad at being sick.
“God gave me cystic fibrosis to see what I would do with it.” Coby said that anytime someone would ask how he felt about having the disease.
Coby was so strong is his faith that he knew exactly where he was going and never questioned, “Why me?”
Need hope? Courage? Inspiration? Motivation?
If someone you know needs some encouragement, and it might be you, taking a glance into Coby’s life might help them or you to Make It Count.
Make It Count by Casey and Coby Gent available on Amazon.