My Prayer- Unedited (And I Don't Really Care)

Dear God,

Thank you for Adam, Alex, Luke and Gary. Thank you for my mom, dad, Shane & Ally. Thank you for the many souls who have touched my life and helped me along the way, and for those whose impact I have not yet realized.

Please God, please take all of the grace you may be granting me and bless Jimmy with it. Forget all of the prayers I have offered on my own behalf and put that love towards Jimmy. I’m good, God. I can manage. If you have to, leave me and tend to him. I have lived a lot. I have experienced more. I have married, birthed children, lost unborn children, and found myself along the way. I have lived success in a career, and been lucky enough to have the security to walk away from it and raise my children. I have loved and been loved. I have laughed and felt moments of ‘no worries.’ I have encountered souls that have filled me with more love than I will ever be able to give back. I have been hurt, and hurt others. I have had my heart destroyed by someone I trusted and had faith in and then nursed back to health by someone who had faith in me.

I am young, but Jimmy? He has so much to experience. He is being cheated God and YOU KNOW IT! He has felt pain no one should have to bare. He has faced his mortality and wondered what will follow. He has watched from a distance as his friends live moments he knows he may never experience; traveling for spring break, going to college, living on campus, and even taking a job. I mean really God? Most kids his age look forward to dollar a beer night and the start of the Buckeyes football season. Not Jimmy. No God, he looks forward to driving again after the seizures stole his ability to do so. He is excited to resume the courses that he had to put off because he was trapped in his body for months while nobody at the James Center could figure out why he was suddenly loosing his motor skills, then his speech, then his ability to swallow. Most kids his age are self conscience about the beater they have to drive around in order to be able to afford to live on campus or the freshman fifteen that has landed on their backside. No, not Jimmy! He is self conscience of all the scars that cris cross back, forth and around again through his thick dark hair from the half dozen or so times he has had his skull cracked open in the last five years…. He is overly aware of the round shape his face has taken on thanks to all of the cancer meds -that hey -seem to be working real f@&*ing well.

Most kids his age worry over the final the next morning. Jimmy worries whether he will SEE the morning. Twenty-somethings look forward to their future and wonder what it will bring. Jimmy looks forward to his future as well, the end of his pain –OH WAIT…. Would that be his death?

It’s just not right. It’s not fair that he is suffering and has been for so long. It is mean and hateful that You could rob him of experiencing all the treasures this incredible planet has to offer and all of the emotions that come with living. Why does he have to carry the burden of something so horribly painful and frightening when he should be living the best days of his life?

I know I am still young. I know I have a lot I have not yet experienced. But God, I've still lived more than Jimmy has and I feel like he is getting short changed and I just don’t understand. Please God, I have asked for strength. I have asked for help to forgive those who have hurt me and the ability to truly let go. I have begged for guidance to become a better mother, a more attentive partner, a supportive friend, a present sister, and a worthy daughter. TAKE ALL OF IT! Take all of the energy and love you are using up on me and give it to him.

It’s just not fair. I don’t understand. Please, please, please! I mean really, you gave me a miracle when I was undeserving, unappreciative, and incapable; can’t you please give Jimmy his? And if you are saving up another one for me, I don’t want it….I DON”T WANT IT, he needs it, HE DESERVES IT!

I have witnessed others suffer the sudden loss of a child, a family member to a tragic accident, and even a friend loose his 31 year old high school sweet heart to lung cancer. I was incredibly sad and horrified in each case, thinking of the pain their loved ones were going through in dealing with their untimely deaths. But this God? I am feeling this one in different way -a bigger way. I hurt inside for this boy. Not as a family member, friend, or parent would hurt…. Not as someone with a connection to the boy, I can’t put my finger on it –or maybe I just can’t put it into words. It’s a darkness that is constant. A feeling of dread, of total repulsion. But this is wrong, God. It can’t possibly be right, it just can’t be.

Please give it to him, please. I know you can, I have been on the receiving end and I know you can do it if you really want to. I don’t know whether or not I deserved any miracles, but I do know that I am IN NO WAY more deserving than that boy who is lying in a hospital bed on life support right now….. two days after his 22 birthday.

A year ago, after months of the poor kid being a prisoner in his own body, I prayed for his peace. I prayed for you to end his pain and to just take him. And then finally, after keeping the James Cancer Center doctors perplexed for months, they tweak a shunt this way or that and DONE! THAT’S IT, problem solved –P-O-W released??!!! One day before his 21st birthday, you sent him home to relearn instinctive movements and get his hopes all high, that he can begin to look ahead to dreams of driving again, of being able to see without an eye patch???!!!! Why did you even bother? To string him along for another year?
What, were you thinking..... “You were sick, you had cancer, you went through pain, torture, let’s just say ……HELL, but I let them get it, the surgery got it, the chemo killed anything that may have been left of it it, and the shunt manages the damage that was done when they went in after it! Go learn how to walk, talk, and see again. Start to feel better –normal even- and maybe look forward to leaving the house for something other than a doctors appointment one day! But hey! Don't make any plans for this time next year, ok?…….”

I just don’t understand, I JUST- DON'T - GET -IT…. Come on, please? Make him healthy. Let him know the joys I have been lucky enough to know….

PLEASE.

PLEASE?

That’s all. My eyes burn , the sun is coming up, and I don’t think there is anything else much to say….. AMEN