My daughter, Holland, was three years old.
We were pregnant with our next child, and life was fine.
Two weeks after her birthday, she started getting headaches.
She couldn't sleep at night because they were so bad.
It just kept getting worse and worse.
Eventually we did an MRI, and they came out and they told us,
"You need to get downtown to the children's hospital
as quickly as you can."
She had a brain tumor on her cerebellum, on the left side,
and it was about the size of a golf ball.
I kind of had this numb feeling of just kind
of taking it all in.
I drove back home.
Everything started to sink in at that point, how real this was.
I just cried the whole way.
"Why?"
You know, "Why is this happening to us?
We're good people.
We've done everything God's asked us to do,
and yet this is still happening."
I tried to pray.
I tried reading the scriptures.
I tried doing all these things to try to find peace,
and I couldn't.
I needed to resolve this.
I either needed to come to peace with God
or say God doesn't exist, because if God existed,
He wouldn't do this to me.
I said a prayer, and I knew that she was going be OK.
I knew that we were going to be all right, that she would live,
and that everything would be all right.
She had several surgeries, and they
were able to remove most of the tumor.
Later that summer, she had two more surgeries.
She was tumor free.
Three or four months later, she started
getting headaches again.
Another scan had shown that in that three-, four-month period,
the tumor had grown back to about the size of a quarter.
It was just hard to do this again.
I remember calling my dad and telling him,
"I feel so helpless.
I feel like there's nothing I can do."
And he said, "You know, son, you can always pray."
And I just remember getting mad at him
and just laughing, you know, and just
saying, "If it was that simple, don't you
think I would have done it?
Don't you think if I could just pray this away,
I would have prayed this away?
I don't feel like that's helping at all."
But I went to the Lord, and I prayed and had that peace
again that our faith was making her whole,
that she'd be OK if we continued to believe and trust
in the Lord.
The surgery was successful.
They were able to remove everything.
Since it was much more aggressive,
they wanted to do chemotherapy.
We went in for just a follow-up MRI.
They had shown that not only had the tumor returned,
but it had spread down her spine and throughout her brain.
I knew that the Lord had told us that everything would be OK.
"This happens all the time.
This is going to be a miracle because the doctor said
there's no hope, but we'll find hope in God."
I said a prayer, and the Lord immediately
said, "She is going to die."
And I remember just asking, "Why?
Why have I been living my whole life
the last 14 months thinking that she was going to live?"
And He said, you know, "You needed that.
If I had told you on that day that she was going to die,
you would have started to grieve her too soon."
But I remember laying--my wife laying on one side,
me laying on the other side of her hospital bed,
and just having my hand on her chest.
And I could feel her heart beating
when they pulled out the breathing tube,
and it just sped up so, so fast, and it
felt like it was just going to burst out,
and then it just slowed down.
And I remember feeling the last beat
and getting up and looking down and knowing that her body was
all that was there and knowing that her spirit wasn't
there anymore.
And that was pain and grief.
That was the worst feeling I've ever had in my life.
I felt hopeless.
I felt angry towards God.
It was--a part of me was ripped out and gone.
We've gone to grief counseling groups,
and people talk about having this hole within you.
Nothing fills it; it's just temporarily removed.
The experience of seeing somebody's first breath
and last breath gives me so much hope in a plan
that there's so much more than first breath and last breath.
So much--so many times we get caught up in that,
that it's just "We're born and then we die."
But when I held her the first time
and I saw that first breath, I knew that she
had come from somewhere else.
I knew that this wasn't where this had started,
that her life existed before this.
And when I experienced her last breath,
I knew that wasn't the end.
I have hope that she's still a part of my life
and that her spirit is still connected to my spirit.
The peace that you feel, it ebbs and flows.
It's--sometimes it's there, sometimes it's not.
But it's always--you're always able to get it back.
Every time I feel angry or upset at God
or feel like I'm done with this, in that moment
it feels like there is no hope.
But all it takes is turning back to Him,
and that hope can come right back.
The one title that I give Him is my friend,
because a friend is there for you when nobody else can be.
And He was there for me and my family in a way
that nobody else could be.
Nobody else could understand the pain and the grief, the sorrow
that we felt, but He did.
And having that friend, that ally, it didn't take it away.
It just--it soothed me.
[LAUGHING]
What's going on back there?
[LAUGHING] A nice fashion show.
Thank you very much for showing us your cool new jammies.
Thanks, everybody.