I am troubled tonight.
Normally, you hop on Facebook to do nothing more than waste a good half hour of time scrolling through your news feed, occasionally giggling at funny cat videos, cooing over pics of your friend's new baby, skipping over all the exhausting political posts (in my case).
But sometimes, sometimes someone posts something that hits you. Hard. Like standing on the freeway and getting blasted by an 18 wheeler right in the heart. It makes you feel terrible, but you read it anyways. Because it's important to read. Because it gives you perspective.
Tonight, I was completely knocked off my feet by a link. This link.
The backstory is, my little cousin, just a year older than Calen, is battling cancer, and has been for some time. This link is about one of her closest friends. If you don't care to read the article (though I encourage it), her friend went in for a routine doctor appointment today, to discover the cancer is back. Not just back, unstoppable. Untreatable. She may have a month to live. She may have less.
She is six years old.
As an empathetic person already, I immediately threw myself into this mother's shoes. But as a mother, a mother of young children, this knocked me flat. For I am not the type of person that thinks "this could never happen to me." What if it did happen? What if I took my sons to the doctor, expecting nothing, and walked out hearing, knowing, they would not live to see this summer. What if, as of today right now, Calen has played his last baseball game. Camden will not reach Kindergarten. They will not go to the playground again. They will never ride a bike again. They will not grow up, get married, have children of their own. They have no future. And not because they were taken suddenly, like a car accident (not to discount the heartbreak and misery of losing a child suddenly), but because of a disease that you can't control, slowly, silently, stealing the life out of your child right in front of you. And you are forced to sit by helplessly and watch. For a week, two weeks, a month maybe. There is no treatment, no cure, no way to stop or slow it. How would you deal? How does this mother deal??
I also think of my baby cousin, who has buried more of her friends at 8 than I have at 31. I think of myself at 8, and try to imagine watching multiple friends slip away from childhood cancer. And if I myself had the same disease these kids have, as my cousin does, and am forced to wonder "Will I be joining them in Heaven? Will I be next?" At eight. These are things 8 year olds shouldn't have to think about.
I was at this cool playground in town today with Camden, hours before I ever got on Facebook and read this post. Instead of sitting by and watching Cam play, like I usually do, I decided I wanted to play. I hopped on the swings beside him and we jumped off pretending to be skydivers, I climbed the castle toy with him and spun him on this spinning thing and we ran and laughed and I remember thinking "what a great day, I'm so glad I actually decided to be involved today, instead of just watching."
And then I read this, and it meant even more. Because there are days when we want to disconnect, when we aren't interested in talking about Lego Ninjago for an hour or laying on the floor playing matchbox cars, when we count the minutes until bedtime. And not that it's wrong to feel that way. But this gives me a lot of perspective, to want more involved days. Because we have no idea what will happen tomorrow. And you will not look back on your (or your child's) life and say "I wish I had sat on the sidelines more." You're going to wish you had jumped off the swings with them. You're going to wish you could have just one more day at the playground.
One of my nightly prayers is to thank God for having healthy, happy children. And to pray that I continue to have healthy, happy children. We, as parents of healthy children, cannot take a single day of our children's lives for granted. Because we have no idea what tomorrow will bring.
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| Healthy. I thank God I'm allowed to say that. |
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