Archives for November 2016

5 DAYS UNTIL RACE DAY!

(The purpose of this 16-week blog is to shine the light on childhood cancer by sharing our family’s personal experience as I prepare to run my first ever half marathon and raise money to help children with cancer and their families.  Be a part of the story! Donate here: http://fundraising.stjude.org/site/TR/Heroes/Heroes?px=2078389&pg=personal&fr_id=59186  then share with your family and friends.)

 

In just five days, I will be running 13.1 miles.

When I decided to sign up for the St. Jude Memphis Half Marathon back in May, I knew it would be challenging for this 54 year old, non-running grandma.  I have battled through wake-you-up-in-the-middle-of-the-night-pain, wicked shin splints, and serious doubt.

The reason that I decided to run in the first place was for my son, Nick.  It has been an entire decade since he left us for Heaven and I wanted to do something meaningful to remember and honor his life.  Raising money to support childhood cancer treatment and research was just the way to do that.

I figured it would be emotional training for this specific half marathon but I had no idea that I would spend many times running in tears. Not because of pain but because I miss my boy or I want my mom or I remember so many other children who have suffered.

 

I WILL CARRY YOU

Sometimes I wonder why I know so many children who have died.  The weight of their memories is not something that I take lightly. Some I have known in this life.  Some I was not able to meet this side of Heaven but have come to know well through their surviving family members. Each one of them has had a part to play in making me into the person that I have become.

Several months ago, I wondered if there was a way, on race day, that I could remember all of these dear children along with the ones who have survived.  I decided that I would create a race day t-shirt and on that shirt I would sew ribbons, white for those now gone and gold for the survivors. Each ribbon would bear the name of that specific person who has personally impacted my life.

Just yesterday I finished sewing the last of 93 ribbons onto my shirt. (You can see most of those names in the September 1 blog titled “Superheroes”.)

Aside from the physical training that I have had to do over the past 6 months, there was this other side to the preparations that took no physical effort at all. In fact, it only required me to sit still and think. And as I carefully sewed each name onto my shirt, I saw their faces and remembered.  I gave thanks to God for those who have survived. I mourned again for those who have not. Many times a vivid memory came to mind. Sometimes I could hear their laughter.

 

DO YOU FEEL THE WEIGHT OF THE WORLD?

  

This shirt does not weigh much at all and yet it carries the weight of the world…countless moments, weeks, and years of sickness, suffering, and sometimes profound loss for each name represented and for their families. The loss may not even be death itself but the loss of a limb or the loss of a future dream or the loss of that “before cancer” innocence.

In just five days, I will be running 13.1 miles.

I will be privileged to carry each of these dear ones with me.

A song was written for a family who lost their infant daughter. This song, “I Will Carry You” by Selah, is song #63 on my Race Day Playlist.  The lyrics remind me of the calling on my life to carry my own son’s legacy through the years to come.

I will carry you while your heart beats here. Long beyond the empty cradle through the coming years, I will carry you all my life and I will praise the One Who’s chosen me to carry you.

Please listen to this song (link below) and consider donating to the St. Jude Memphis Half Marathon so together we can carry the burden and find a cure for childhood cancer.

https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=FlDUkp1Ts8A

There were photographs I wanted to take
Things I wanted to show you
Sing sweet lullabies, wipe your teary eyes
Who could love you like this?

People say that I am brave but I’m not
Truth is I’m barely hanging on
But there’s a greater story
Written long before me
Because He loves you like this

So I will carry you
While your heart beats here
Long beyond the empty cradle
Through the coming years
I will carry you
All my life
And I will praise the One Who’s chosen me
To carry you

Such a short time
Such a long road
All this madness but I know
That the silence
Has brought me to His voice
And He says…

I’ve shown him photographs of time beginning
Walked him through the parted seas
Angel lullabies, no more teary eyes
Who could love him like this?

I will carry you
While your heart beats here
Long beyond the empty cradle
Through the coming years
I will carry you
All your life
And I will praise the One Who’s chosen me
To carry you

 

Be part of The Story!  Donate here…

If you are unable to donate financially, please consider passing along this message to others who can.  Thank you!

http://fundraising.stjude.org/site/TR/Heroes/Heroes?px=2078389&pg=personal&fr_id=59186

 

Many of you who are reading this most likely know our Backstory, or at least part of it.  If you don’t and would like to know more details of Nick’s story, you can visit his CaringBridge site here…

https://www.caringbridge.org/visit/nickavery

30 DAYS UNTIL RACE DAY!

(The purpose of this 16-week blog is to shine the light on childhood cancer by sharing our family’s personal experience as I prepare to run my first ever half marathon and raise money to help children with cancer and their families.  Be a part of the story! Donate here: http://fundraising.stjude.org/site/TR/Heroes/Heroes?px=2078389&pg=personal&fr_id=59186  then share with your family and friends.)

 

When a friend of mine (who is a runner) found out that I had signed up for the half marathon, he said with much enthusiasm “We were made to run!”  Again, he’s a runner.  And evidently doesn’t know me well at all.

I didn’t get the same response from the people who have known me my entire life…

My best friend of 53 years keeps saying, “It sounds so weird when you talk about race day!”

When I told my siblings that I had signed up for the half marathon, their immediate and very appropriate response was “WHHHAAAAATTTT???!!!” 

I still don’t think that my sister-in-law believed it because a few weeks later at a family gathering she asked, “So, you’re running a half marathon?”  Then she started laughing hysterically.

Yeah…

I’m pretty sure that I was NOT made to run…anywhere…for any reason.

 

RUNNING THE RACE WITH PURPOSE

I love telling the story of Amos Muzyad Yakhoob Kairouz.

Amos was one of ten children born in Detroit, Michigan to parents who were very poor and struggling Lebanese immigrants. After moving the family to Toledo, Ohio, Amos’ father sold hardware – nails, needles, thread, rope – on consignment off the back of a horse-drawn carriage to the farms in Ohio just to make ends meet.

Amos’ daughter says “dad told us that in his neighborhood nobody ever went to a doctor. My grandmother had her 10 babies without a doctor; Dad was delivered by a horse doctor! Children in the neighborhood died from influenza, and one died from an infection by a rodent bite. My father’s baby brother lost an eye in a rubber band accident. I don’t think my dad ever forgot the injustice of all that. He always felt that every child had a birthright to good health care.”

As Amos grew into adulthood and married, he decided to pursue his love of acting. He was not at all successful and in 1937 his wife, pregnant with their first child, told him that he needed to get a job that would pay the bills.

Feeling hopeless and scared, Amos went to church to pray.  In those moments, he made a promise to God. He asked God to help him find his way in life and that if He did, Amos would one day build a shrine. Knowing that he would need $70 to pay the soon coming hospital bill for the birth of his child, Amos took seven of the last 10 dollars out of his pocket and put it into the offering plate.

Shortly after that, Amos got called to do a commercial for a singing toothbrush. The pay was $75. This was his sign. And that commercial was the beginning of the long and successful career of Danny Thomas.

Danny not only went on to become a very popular actor in his time, he also produced such shows such as The Andy Griffith Show and The Dick Van Dyke Show.

Time passed and Danny remembered the promise he had made in church so many years earlier. He decided that he would build a hospital to care for children with hopeless diseases and began to get his friends involved in raising money and spreading the word. He would name this place St. Jude after the saint of hopeless causes. It would be a place that not only cared for the sickest of children but it would also be a place of research and treatment that would focus on finding out why these children were getting sick in the first place.

Danny’s hospital, St. Jude Children’s Research Hospital, opened its doors in 1962 in a time when the overall survival rate for childhood cancer was 20%. Today, 54 years later, that survival rate stands at more than 80% overall because of the work that is done at St. Jude.

 “I believe I know why I was born, why I was put on this earth.  And I think any person who can say that is blessed.” -Danny Thomas

“I was born to build St. Jude.” -Danny Thomas (from 1987 article in Coping with Cancer)

One man, an actor with no medical background but with a passion for sick and dying children, changes the world. Danny was definitely born to build St. Jude.  Proof of the difference that one person can make when they figure out why they were put on this earth.

 

WE WERE BORN FOR THIS

Even though I have some ideas, I can’t say with confidence that I know for sure why I born.

One day while Nick was getting chemotherapy at St. Jude, I sat reading my Bible…Psalm 71 to be exact…

“For You have been my hope, Sovereign Lord, my confidence since my youth. From birth I have relied on You; You brought me forth from my mother’s womb.” (v 5-6)

“Though You have made me see troubles, many and bitter, You will restore my life again; from the depths of the earth You will again bring me up.” (v 20)

But then this…

“I have become a portent to many; but You are my strong refuge.” (v 7)

I could not stop looking at that sentence. I felt that it was speaking directly to me. But why?  And what is a portent? I wrote the sentence down and vowed to look into the meaning.

Later on that day, I found out that a portent is a sign or warning that something of future significance, possibly disastrous, is likely to happen.  So, in other words, I have become a sign (portent) to many that bad, even disasterous, things are likely to happen in life; but God is still and forever my strong refuge.

Little did I know at that time what my family would walk through in the years following.  And while I know for sure that I wasn’t born to run, I’m pretty sure that I was born to be a portent.

The reason why we were born into this particular time in history and in this particular place on the earth is different for each of us, but we are all born to run this race of life with everything we have in us, never giving up, holding out hope that a better day is coming.

Sing like it’s the last song you will ever sing.

Live like it’s the last day you will ever see.

Finish the race well. We were born for this.

 

I love song #3 from my Race Day Playlist, Born for This by Paramore. The chorus will be my anthem on race day. https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=OFxpEFb7TtE

Everybody sing, like it’s the last song you will ever sing

(Tell me, tell me do you feel the pressure now?)

Everybody live, like it’s the last day you will ever see

(Tell me, tell me do you feel the pressure now?)

Everybody sing, like it’s the last song you will ever sing

(Tell me, tell me do you feel the pressure?)

Alright, so you think you’re ready?
OK, then you say this with me, go:
WE WERE BORN FOR THIS!

 

Be part of the story!  Donate here…

If you are unable to donate financially, please consider passing along this message to others who can.  Thank you!

http://fundraising.stjude.org/site/TR/Heroes/Heroes?px=2078389&pg=personal&fr_id=59186

 

Many of you who are reading this most likely know our Backstory, or at least part of it.  If you don’t and would like to know more details of Nick’s story, you can visit his CaringBridge site here…

https://www.caringbridge.org/visit/nickavery