SEPTEMBER 27, 2015

Last night I was blessed to meet a mother of a 4 year old that is fighting a hard to cure illness. This little boy may need a bone marrow transplant in the coming months. I met this beautiful mother in the kitchen of the Ronald McDonald House. Made For A Miracle was there to prepare a meal for the families that are staying there. Although she sat with her husband to eat dinner, she was also running back and forth to the stove and making a yummy chicken soup for her son. She explained that her son needs to be on a specific diet and she makes his dinner every night for him. I saw that my Pastor’s wife (who was helping us prepare the meal) was speaking with her and saw some tears fall down her face. I knew I had to step over there and join the conversation. I wanted, if anything, to be supportive of whatever reason she was crying for. You can see the tiredness and pain in her eyes.  You can see the defeat in the wrinkles of her young 20-something face. She was hurting. She was a mother who was trying her best to hold it together during a time of fear and despair. A time of hopelessness and negativity. She was a mother who was trying to make it better…. and she was tired.

When I joined in on the conversation and we continued to allow her to tell her amazing story, we saw that she just needed someone to listen. She needed someone that understands what she is going through. She needed advice. She needed to talk and vent about everything that was going on….she needed a hug. She needed to know that she was not alone. I remember those days. Exactly one year ago, I was HER. I was feeling all the feelings that SHE is feeling. I was HER. And for me, it was important to know that I was not alone in this. And THAT was what I wanted to make sure, before the night was over, that she knew SHE WAS NOT ALONE!

I think it is important for people to understand that when you have a child who is critically-ill or a child that has a serious deadly illness, a mother’s life gets put on hold. Our hearts STOP. Our breathing STOPS. Our mind STOPS. And our children, our babies are thrown into a world of unknown. And we mothers are often so discombobulated by the fact that mommy can’t make it better… we are broken. We become so desperate in trying to make it better that we lose all sense of human feelings, thoughts, and actions. We become like zombies in a sense because we are literally walking around almost dead inside. A human can only take so much trauma at once. And when that trauma lasts for weeks and months, it puts us in a state of shock. And when that shock isn’t comforted or calmed, we lose our sense of self. And it honestly takes a person who has been through that same trauma to understand how we feel, to be able to touch the center core of that hurting mother.

This mother, her husband and her 4 year old son, have been living at the Ronald McDonald House for 2 months. Her son has been through so much already in the 4 years he has been alive. Their hometown is almost 6 hours away from the Children’s Hospital. Both parents dropped everything to be here with their son. Both parents beleived for weeks that they were going to lose their son. This mother receives state assistance and this little family of three lives off of $100 a month. My heart jumped when I heard that. But as quickly as my breath was taken away, my Pastor’s wife and I looked at each other and we immediately knew…. we are going to help this family. This strong mother and her little family are now a part of OUR FAMILY. We are going to do anything and everything to get help for her and her family. THIS … IS … IT! THIS is the reason why I created Made For A Miracle. I want to help families and mothers like her.

My heart hurts knowing she has been there for 2 months and I could have been helping her already. But I know now… and I will be doing everything in my power to help her. Speaking with my Pastor’s wife, we plan on helping them financially and spiritually. We are going to make sure that she and her family can afford the gas to get home. And we are going to make sure that she has the groceries she needs for her son. We are going to make sure she and her family have everything they need for the rest of their stay. We want to make sure she KNOWS she is NOT ALONE in this.

I just pray that the Lord gives us whatever WE need to do what we can for them. Amen.

xoxo

God Bless