My plan for my life was to have a child every two years.
I had that mapped out.
I was going to have a kid every two years.
I didn't know how many.
I wanted a big family.
So we had a boy first, and then two years later another boy.
And at 22 months old, we found a tumor.
Suddenly we were thrown into a whole different world,
a world I didn't even know existed.
We were thrown into the medical world,
into surgery, into the hospital, into chemotherapy.
I had my daughter right before we
found his tumor, one week before we found his tumor.
He had this rare disorder.
I'd ever heard of it.
You know, there was nothing more that could be done.
He did pass away at home.
In the meantime, we had another son.
It started with my daughter.
She got to bone cancer on her rib.
My husband got thyroid cancer, and then he
got Burkitt's lymphoma.
I've never seen chemotherapy that tough.
Drew got bone cancer, just like his sister.
It was more intense this time.
And then Andrea got cancer from her chemotherapy.
She needed a stem cell transplant.
My husband was diagnosed with the same thing as my daughter.
Andrea recovered very quickly.
Drew kept getting bad news and bad news and bad news.
My son passed away three weeks before my husband.
I began to think maybe I couldn't do this.
Maybe I wasn't strong enough.
I began to think that I might fail,
but the Lord was not going to allow me to fail.
And I know that that's not unique to me,
that He does that for everybody.
It's not always about us.
We're not going through this because we need to change
or we're not good enough.
I became someone more capable of helping others
and of having compassion and of understanding
at an intimate level what other people go through.
And I found a great deal of joy in using
the things that I've learned to help other people,
especially families who have children with cancer.
One of my missions in life is to comfort others
who are going through cancer.
And that I know how to do it because I've been through it.
It's like to me it's like Newton's Law,
for every action there is an equal and opposite reaction.
Equal and opposite.
So I think the greater our sorrow is,
the greater our capacity is to feel joy.
I've been surprised.
I feel a great deal of tenderness toward my Savior,
because He really is so sweet.
He really does provide what you need.