I'm still right here with you

4 years ago today.

"We believe your child has leukemia."

OUR WORLD FLIPPED. The kind of flipped when you lose all feeling in your entire body and feel like you're having an out of body experience. You instantly feel weak and everything becomes blurry. You feel weightless. Like you're not even there. Part of you isn't and never will be again.

Cancer. Our perfect 5 year old has cancer.  Our little dancer, soccer player, KINDERGARTENER.

TEARS, more and more tears.  Looking at each other like "fix it, please fix it", knowing neither of us can. Falling to pieces right in front of her, neither of us able to hold it together.  You can't hold a weight THAT heavy.

SHOCK. Not her. NO.

HOW. Genetics?  Environment?  Foods?  Vaccines? God's plan????

WHY.   We are believers, shouldn't we be spared from things like this.  A benefit to trusting God? We're "good" people. We do good things. We've done nothing wrong. She's done absolutely nothing wrong.  As if it were ever a matter of deservedness.

WHERE.  Everywhere, running through the veins of her entire little body.

WHEN.  When did this happen?  When did she go from being a regular, normal little girl to this monster living inside of her? When did that tiny rogue cancer cell develop, mutate, and spread. We were just in Disney World, the happiest place on earth, and now this.  Talk about a highs and lows.

After getting an IV, they take us to the 8th floor.  The doors open up into a world that initially felt like a concentration camp for children.  I expected to see and hear the worst as we walked all the way to the end of the long hall.  But I didn't.  I saw a little boy in Thomas the Train PJS, slippers, and hat, maybe 3 years old, running behind the nurses desk, one of them scooping him up and hugging him.  It surprised me. I saw his mom's face as I walked by.  She knew.

SPINNING. The whole room was spinning.  We are going to be sleeping here?  Staying here?  Living here? 

As we settled down for the night, Tiny looked over from her hospital bed, "It's Ok Mommy, don't cry, I'm still right here with you." Through all of the craziness of this day, not one tear, not one question, NOT ONE.  She trusted us.  She knew we would do what was best for her, what was good for her, what would make her all better.

If only we trusted HIM the way she trusted us.

That's when I knew that was the only thing I COULD do.  The only control I had, to hold onto HIm for dear life, her dear life, my dear life, our dear life.