The Beginning

My baby girl is now a high schooler. A newly-turned 14 year old. A 14 year old with Acute Lymphoblastic Leukemia (ALL). As a parent, we want to shield our babies from pain. From falling off their first slide to getting their heart broken by a first crush. It's ironic isn't it? That all of that work to protect and constantly keep our babies safe, we can't shield them from this. We can't take away cancer. 

The hospital room is completely dark except the little blue and green light display on her iv pump, the glow of my laptop, and so many lights outside our window that Lucille Packard Children's Hospital looks like it's own city. 

I keep thinking about how to write out those first days. The moments following up to her diagnosis and the blur that happened after. The hows. The whys are another story. The whys I have learned to leave up to God. I honestly don't need to know why. Is that strange?  I think it's because I KNOW that He is good and gracious and merciful and just and compassionate and has taken the most heinous situations in our lives thus far and carved out masterpieces that we never saw coming. In all of this, I know that in my limited view, all I would have been capable of seeing is a piece of shit pile of driftwood. But even that I'm convinced, He could transform.