WARNING: I'm going to RANT!!!

I was just sitting here watching the evening news and I heard a news blip that caught my attention. They said (and I quote)

"Cancer among children is not common..."

That's when I stopped listening because a bomb went off in my head!!! WHAT??!?!?

I just signed a petition to try to increase funding for childhood cancer...here's what it said:

Childhood cancer is the #1 killer disease of our children, more than from asthma, diabetes, cystic fibrosis, congenital anomalies, and pediatric AIDS combined. One in 300 children will be diagnosed with cancer before age 20. Each year 3,000 children die, and 35-40,000 are in treatment.

I don't know about you but that doesn't sound too uncommon to me!!

Ask Julian if it's uncommon...oh wait you can't because he is in heaven...he was only four years old.

Or Coleman...or John Eric, or Haley, or Sara, or Bailey, or any of the hundreds of other children who have had their lives altered or have died because of cancer. These are real children, children with names, with faces, with moms and dads and brothers and sisters!! These are children who should be outside swimming in the pool and playing in the sand and instead they know what a port is, and what chemo is, and the names of their favorite nurses!!!

Okay, I'm going to step off my ranting stage now, but don't ever tell me that childhood cancer is uncommon until this beast is stopped and not a single other mother has to bury her baby because of it...or I might just step back onstage!!

A Sobering Thought....

This beautiful little boy passed on this past Saturday...

I've been following his blog for awhile, praying for a miraculous healing that was never meant to be I guess...

Such a sweet little boy, only four years old...I can't even imagine the pain his parents are going through right now. I know I cried for almost an hour and I didn't even really know him.

His mother's optimism and faith in the midst of this tragedy has been amazing.

In the process she has inspired me to hold my own children a little tighter...to love on them a little more...and to be annoyed by their crazy antics a whole lot less...with gratefulness that they are here to annoy me.

I have found a little more joy in watching my ten year old son tackle and tickle his twelve year old sister...I have found peace in watching my little girls "mother" their babies...and I have found happiness in the ten pounds of sand brought home from the sandbox.

Hug your children just a little tighter tonight and say a prayer for Julian's family...it's going to be a hard road for them for awhile.

On the lighter side...my son was overheard saying, "MOM! I know what we should do today!!! We should go out and ask every black person we meet to sit at the FRONT of the bus!!" He was so serious!! I'm not sure he really gets the reason we are out of school today...but his heart was in the right place!!