My plan for my life was to
have a child every two years. I had that mapped out. I was going to have a
kid every two years. I didn't know how many. I wanted a big family. So we had a boy first, and then
two years later another boy. And at 22 months old,
we found a tumor.
Suddenly we were thrown into
a whole different world, a world I didn't
even know existed. We were thrown into
the medical world, into surgery, into the
hospital, into chemotherapy. I had my daughter
right before we found his tumor, one week
before we found his tumor. He had this rare disorder. I'd never heard of it. You know, there was nothing
more that could be done. He did pass away at home.
In the meantime,
we had another son. It started with my daughter. She got bone cancer on her rib. My husband got thyroid
cancer, and then he got Burkitt's lymphoma. I've never seen
chemotherapy that tough. Drew got bone cancer,
just like his sister. It was more intense this time. And then Andrea got cancer
from her chemotherapy. She needed a stem
cell transplant. My husband was diagnosed with
the same thing as my daughter. Andrea recovered very quickly. Drew kept getting bad news
and bad news and bad news. My son passed away three
weeks before my husband.
I began to think maybe
I couldn't do this, maybe I wasn't strong enough. I began to think
that I might fail. But the Lord was not
going to allow me to fail. And I know that that's
not unique to me, that He does that for everybody. It's not always about us. We're not going through this
because we need to change or we're not good enough. I became someone more
capable of helping others and of having compassion
and of understanding at an intimate level what
other people go through. And I found a great
deal of joy in using the things that I've learned
to help other people, especially families who
have children with cancer. One of my missions in
life is to comfort others who are going through cancer. And I know how to do it
because I've been through it. To me, it's like Newton's
Law, for every action there is an equal and opposite
reaction--equal and opposite. So I think the
greater our sorrow is, the greater our
capacity is to feel joy. I've been surprised. I feel a great deal of
tenderness toward my Savior because He really is so sweet. He really does
provide what you need.