Laughing With-Regina Spektor

I just heard this song, and it couldn't be more true. It's funny, because last night I stumbled on a blog of a woman who has a three year old daughter with a brain tumor. It is essentially terminal, there is pretty much no way she will recover. But, the mother just asked that as many people as possible to pray for her. I saw this little girl and thought, what if it were Miles? I know there are kids dying all over the world everyday, but for some reason this one got me. Three years old, and just like that- her eye looks a little funny, take her to the doctor, the worst kind of inoperable brain tumor.  I prayed for her, and I haven't prayed in a very long time.

It made me stop and think once again about the things we take for granted. We all take our children for granted, their health for granted on some level. It's human, but it doesn't mean we shouldn't slow down every once and a while and thank God that we have healthy children who we don't have to hold down for painful procedures, or wonder how much longer we will have them here to snuggle in bed, or smell their heads after a bath. 

I can't think of all this and not think of how I take my own health for granted. Not only do I take it for granted, but I abuse it. My son's godfather has a brother who is 29 years old, with two year old twin girls. He has, at this point, at most a week to live after fighting colon cancer for the last two years. His little girls will not remember their daddy. His wife is experiencing a pain that I hope I will never know. If given the chance, would he abuse his body the way I do?  Obviously we all know the answer to that. 

Maybe we all need to slow down, look at our children as the gifts they are, and eventually at ourselves for the gifts that we are to them. They don't know what we do to ourselves, and I pray they will never have to live with the consequences. All they know is they love their mommy, and she's always there. I want to do everything in my power to keep it that way. 

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