Courage

 Today, my mind and my heart are on the children, all over the world who are struggling. The ones who are fighting everyday for their lives. Some of them have cancer, some of them have broken hearts, and some of them have diseases that they don't even really have names for. Whatever they have, they're hurting and they're desperate from relief of these ailments. As a parent, it's hard to see your child go through any amount of pain. Regardless what they're going through, you want to guide them through it. Love them, hold them, and reassure them that everything is going to be alright. But how do you do that for your child, when everything is NOT going to be alright? How do you fight back the tears, choke back the sorrow, and tell your dying child that they're going to be ok? Do you? I imagine that some of these children, who are fighting cancer at such a young age, simply don't understand why they don't get better. As children, they're innocent, and unaffected by the world and all it's cruelty. When something hurts, they take it to mommy, whose kisses have always before held the power to make it better....and these children...they go to mommy to take the pain away, and she can't. Nothing she does works...and that's a hard reality to face. For both mommy and child.

"Sometimes Even To Live, Is An Act Of Courage."


I'll be honest, there's a part of me that always kind of feels like it must be a cruel God that would do to these children as he does. What could these innocent, brand new lives have ever really done to deserve the things they go through, the pain they endure. People who have never experienced loss say the same things "they were meant for something better." Hell, even us parents, who are struggling to figure out why WE'RE experiencing this loss try that line. Its a nauseating feeling, truly. I've never been on the flip side of it though, as I've never been a child with a serious illness. I often have to ask myself what must this child be thinking, what must they be feeling. I rarely have the answers though, because it's so hard to imagine what they're going through. Giving birth to a stillborn baby, as I did, is totally different than nursing a child that hurts. With my baby, I didn't have to endure the tears, and the upset, and the lack of understanding in tiny little eyes. I can imagine how hard it must be to try to explain to your child, eyes so wide with fear, what they're going through.
Amazingly though, through Facebook, I've come into contact with, and followed stories of amazing courage. As hard as I'm sure it is for most children to understand what they're going through, some children really embrace it with amazing courage and strength. Some children choose to simply enjoy what life they have, what's left of it, taking no minute for granted. It amazes me quite often how children of such short life can know more about strength than we do. The reasoning behind it is, I imagine, is innocence. Children have no sense of foreboding or fate. They don't understand death or the fact that one day, they could wake up to their last day. It's a terrible fate that they're forced to live with. A few blogs in particular really touched my heart. A mommy blogger, Mary Tyler Mom, talks in great detail about fighting cancer with her sweet Donna.   Anissa shares her life story, and that of the treatment of her precious daughter Peyton, and Ben's family talks about his battle, and how it felt when his sweet life was lost. :(
The fact is, there's really no telling what another person is going through, and in comparison, our day to day lives aren't really that bad. It's hard sometimes to remember what's important, but these stories always put it into perspective a little bit. When babies are fighting cancer, incurable illnesses, and death, can anything I'm enduring REALLY be that bad? So I'm sending out a prayer tonight to all those little ones still fighting, and a message to Bells to play with the ones who are playing in Heaven.