We’ve been home from the Lighthouse Family Retreat for a week now. It was so much fun! We met some amazing people… the other volunteer families as well as the families who are battling cancer. Every day we played, laughed, ate (A LOT), swam, danced, ate (some more), helped, encouraged, loved, and slept like babies.
It was an exhausting week physically and for me, mentally too. You see, midway through our week I got an email from my mom telling me that my aunt Sharon lost her battle with cancer. She was diagnosed earlier this year with non-Hodgkins Lymphoma. She was doing so well in her treatment that her death came as a shock to everyone. It was at that moment that I understood what these retreat families were dealing with. The constant fear of what could be.
The children with cancer all had approval from their doctors to be with us at the beach. They were all healthy enough to play the games and be around lots of other kids. But so was my aunt Sharon. She updated her Facebook page all the time with pictures and things she planned to do on any given day. Occasionally she would post “I HATE CANCER”, but most often she was upbeat and positive about the changes in her life. In her last FB post she told how she had cooled off in her friend’s pool and then gone home to take a nap before dinner. And then it was over.
The reality of what it must be like to have a child with cancer overwhelmed me. I looked at each of them a little differently. Not to pity them, but to truly take in each moment with them. To see life as the gift that it is. And to be thankful for the health of my own kids.
The family we were blessed to serve last week is the Ethridge family. Their 3 year old daughter, Brynlee, was diagnosed with leukemia 5 months ago. I’ve been following them on Facebook since our return and her mom is asking for prayers right now that Brynlee’s bloodwork numbers will improve. They are still too low for her to have another chemo treatment and as of this week, it is putting them 4 weeks behind schedule. Please say a pray for this sweet, precious child and her parents who are enduring the very thing we fear the most. And if you’d like to follow her too, her website is here.
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