“Thinking she just had the flu, we took her to the hospital. The infection spread throughout her tiny body. She woke in a coma, her entire body wrapped in white gauze. A competitive dancer, she assured us, ‘Mom, I am going to dance again!’ We told the doctor, ‘Do anything you have to in order to save our baby girl!’”
“‘So you are the people that want teenagers… are you crazy?’ I said, ‘Something like that.’ She replied, ‘Well, I got a phone call in your driveway for a 16-year-old male who needs a home by tonight.’ I told her, ‘Bring him home.’ My husband looked at me like I was crazy. But he agreed. ‘She’s right, bring him home.’”
“It looks like changing the channel when the commercials come on talking about gifts for Mom, because you know not even Amazon Prime can deliver a gift to Heaven. You hope nobody will ask you what your plans are with your Mom for Mother’s Day.”
“I thought, ‘Well, what the heck.’ A lovely young lady messaged me. Turns out, her girls needed a grandma in their lives just as much as I needed grandbabies to love. She has struggles she is unable to disclose to her own mom, so I have become her confidant. All I ever wanted to be is a good mom, and an even better Grandma.”
“I hugged a stranger in Walmart. I was in line waiting to check out. The older gentleman behind me was looking for a nice picture frame to use for his mother’s picture. He had recently lost his mother. They had lived together, and he took care of her.”
“We decided to try for children on our own ONE final time. They gave me the choice to terminate one of my babies, or risk losing the twins. But we felt we were given a third baby for a reason, so we decided to take our chances.”
“I got off the phone devastated. Bawling. I felt like a failure. Losing a partnership like that, a friendship, felt like death. I began to picture all the holidays – separated as a family, and the awkward meet ups to switch the kids on our given days. I pictured being cold and disrespectful to other. It was the most painful things I could imagine.”
“I’ll never forget. It was a breezy April afternoon. I can’t erase it from my memory– the phone call or the panicked voice on the other end. ‘There is something wrong with Avery… You need to get home.’ I had left to run a couple errands. It had been only minutes since I had last seen her.”
“I was confronted by a family member with two large garbage bags. It was a relief I’d finally been caught. I’d wonder how I had gotten a fat lip and had blood all over my face, the night before team pictures for my 5-year-old’s soccer team.”
“I doubled over. I couldn’t lift my arms. My head felt heavy as it rested against my knees. My dad opened the door and immediately covered me. I felt the moisture of his tears against my cheek. I approached the very tall, soft-faced Chaplain. He had the saddest eyes I’d ever seen.”
