celebrate * remember * fight back

prepping for surgery...

Those of you who know the Relay For Life, know about my title today. But, as we are just days away from Charli's "anniversary" those three words have meant more to me than I realized.

I have been thinking about what I would write this weekend for a long time. "It" is always on my mind, and this place really was an outlet for my feelings, fears, joys, and just life in general. But, there comes a point when I realized...maybe I should move beyond what has been the past and only focus on the future. That is when I realized, that our past will always be a part of our future. We would be fools to let it go and blindly carry on. On a different level of being a "God fearing individual", I am also a "cancer fearing individual". By saying that, I mean I respect the nature that things can come up and change so quickly. I treasure the now and realize that it may not have been, and it may not always be. I am guessing there are people reading this thinking "you can't always fear the unknown"...and I imagine those of you who have been down this path can somewhat, if not fully, understand what I am trying to say.

The past few days I have been cleaning and organizing, finding treasures for our summer Relay For Life garage sale. Today was the day for Charli's closet. I have a ton of bags, love fun bags!! And, in each of these bags is almost always the "usual" for me...hand sanitizer and suckers :-). In a bag today I found something extra, two tubes of EMLA cream. This is the cream that we used each time Charli's port was accessed. We would put the cream on her port area, cover it with press-n-seal and make our way to Omaha. I loved the stuff...it made accessing her port a breeze. I have no ill feelings to EMLA, in fact I am a fan. As I pulled it out of the bag this morning though, I cried. Why did I cry?! This stuff was our friend!!!! There are always reminders, always.

CELEBRATE
To celebrate how far Charli has come, and how far we have come, we will be taking some time to celebrate on Monday. Chad and I have taken the afternoon off (if all goes well!) and we plan to do something special with Charli that afternoon. We want to celebrate the life that God so graciously gave us not only once in this lifetime...but twice with her diagnosis and successful treatment of the neuroblastoma. Last year we had a pizza party for our family to thank them for their help while Charli was in treatment. This year it is all about her!

REMEMBER
We all remember and honor things in different ways. I tend to remember all the time. With Harper being born only one month before Charli was, it is strange to see how different things could have been with Charli when she was that age. But also, it makes me so thankful that her body was giving us those hints that we needed to get her diagnosis. I remember the Thursday that she started acting strangely, I remember telling her Aunt Amanda "she doesn't want to be crabby, I know it!". I remember the "first time mom" look from almost everyone at first and the words from some too. I remember thinking a billboard was talking to me (boy was I WRONG!!), I will always remember her St. Patricks day dress she didn't get to wear on St. Pats day, the phone calls made, posts written, tears shed, blessings received, shutting down and turning off, being hopeless but most of all hopeful. There is so much to remember...most of the memories are suppressed I think and pop up on occasion for whatever reason jars my memory.

What I also remember are people 100% believing us and pushing me to push the doctors, I remember late night hospital visitors popping in just to see her sleep and give us hugs. I remember phone calls, letters, emails, and anonymous gifts. I remember the desperate need people had to come see Charli, because they couldn't wrap their mind around the reality. I remember feeling disgust, terror, strength, passion, hope, faith, love, fear, anger, resentment, jealousy, joy, anticipation, and being just naive enough to make it through some days! I remember feeling pretty much any emotion I have ever dreamed of! And at the end of it all I still feel thankful and full of gratitude to all who were a part of it and our God for the miracle we not only expected but were chosen to receive.

I was reminded again this week that life isn't always fair, and we won't always know why things work out the way they do. But, we are not supposed to...so we should really stop asking! At the beginning and end of everything is God -- who are we to judge. Of course sometimes it is hard not to question why something worked out the way it did, but by dwelling on it we are basically doubting His choices for us.




FIGHT BACK
I remember the day in college when I decided my methodology in life would be "If you don't like something, change it. If you can't change it, change the way you look at it. And if you can't do that, get over it!" I can even tell you where I was...at a "Mr. Basketball" game in Kearney watching my nephew Andrew play basketball at Sunrise Elementary near my apartment! I TRY TRY TRY to remember this when things have me upset. Of course we all have our moments when we need to overreact about something before we can move on, but it is the moving on or moving forward that is important!!

We fight back, by literally fighting back! We have tried to make childhood cancer awareness and raising funds for cancer our priority. We are doing this by being active in fundraising and advocating for CureSearch, Alex's Lemonade Stand, CNCF, and the American Cancer Society to name a few. We try to reach out when a local family is down this path, and do our best to do whatever we can to help them with whatever they need. We fight back because year ago others fought back, and that is why Charli's story is as successful as it is. And, because we are fighting back, someone down the road, with a little faith, with have to fight a little less.

My challenge to you is to take a moment to figure out how you can CELEBRATE * REMEMBER * FIGHT BACK. It doesn't take one large act to make a difference, but several people making everyday/typical acts that will make all the difference in the world!!!!!!!

the face of a miracle

Charli is doing well!! She goes down for what may be her last ultrasound later this month. We trust the results will still be good, but as mentioned before we respect the situation just enough to still be scared out of our minds :-)

Thank you for following Charli and her journey in life...we wouldn't have made it to this point alone!

Sounds kind of silly to say this...but, Happy Anniversary Charli! What started as a horrible day is now a day that I know saved your life. I will forever love March 15th....