Summer 2013
“Please pray”, the status read. The paragraph on a friend’s Facebook went on to detail the sweet little girl, a friend and a classmate, rushed to the hospital and even then in surgery to remove a brain tumor. Please pray…
“Please pray”, the man said. That same night, on our way into the emergency room for Chase, we met a friend: a brave man who rides fast and sure under the flashing lights that bring the littles to the hospital’s safe haven. He said he’d been out by us that day and he couldn’t say who or what, but he said: “Please pray.”
A few days later, I went up to the neurosurgery floor and asked… Upon being ushered into a darkened room, I saw the sweet little girl laying propped on pillows, her beautiful dark hair pulled aside; the back of her head shaved from the surgery. She had yet to regain full movement. She should have been in a classroom with her friends as she’d been a moment ago…not in this room. The exhausted, shocked look in the parents’ eyes mirrored feelings I remembered all too well in those initial days and I asked what we could do and they said: “Please pray.”
On a crisp Fall day months later, the last of Chase’s chemo days, I saw the mom of the sweet little girl in the hospital hall and we hugged and spoke of the future. She asked me what was ahead and I told her my heart and said: “Please pray.”
Just a few days ago, the email came. The treatment for metastatic medulloblastoma was complete and the sweet little girl who fought since that first Summer day would soon be free of the hospital life and we prayed with great joy that night.
And then came the news. A late night fever of 105. A sure sign that illness and infections had set in on a tiny body that knew no immunity. Too soon after the chemo, there was nothing left with which to fight and the medical minds began the rush against time and infection to understand. Yet she fights! Though the situation grows more serious and she moves to the unit for intensive care, she fight on! And I asked her mom – her strong and amazing mom who clings to hope and faith in extraordinary, awful circumstances – what can we do? …and she said: “Please pray.”
Please pray for Kayla.
Moment by moment.
I believe that I shall look upon the goodness of the Lord
in the land of the living! Psalm 27:13
