Three words…

The first word?

Cancer.

Doctors first spoke it one year ago.

They spoke it about a fourteen year old girl…

“Aggressive cancer,” they told her parents.

The year since has been filled with emotions…

Shock.

Disbelief.

Anger.

Resolve…

The days have been filled with moods that swing between certain hope and utter despair.

Filled with struggles against nausea…

And fatigue…

And tears…

And fear.

Now all three of them they sit in a hospital room and wait for the doctor.

Holding hands…

Holding back tears…

Holding on to hope…

Holding on to faith.

The doctor enters the room.

He speaks quietly, slowly…

“We’ve done all we can,” he said.

The second word enters the room, unspoken…

Death.

In the months that follow, well-meaning friends say words that hurt more than they will ever know…

“Don’t you wish,” says one, “that she’d lived long enough to have a meaningful life?”

The mother can’t get the words out of her head or her heart…

Had her daughter lived a meaningful life?

She loved her parents…

And they loved her.

She loved her brother…

and He loved her.

She loved God…

You shall love the Lord your God with all your heart and with all your soul and with all your might.  Deuteronomy 6:5

And He loved her.

…neither death nor life, neither angels nor demons, neither the present nor the future, nor any powers, neither height nor depth, nor anything else in all creation, will be able to separate us from the love of God that is in Christ Jesus our Lord.  Romans 8:38-39 

A third word came into the mother’s mind…Love.

Does God measure a meaningful life by the number of days lived?

By the list of things accomplished during those days?

Or does He measure a meaningful life by looking at our hearts?

…The Lord does not look at the things people look at. People look at the outward appearance, but the Lord looks at the heart.” 1 Samuel 16:7 

And measuring the love we have shared…

A new commandment I give to you, that you love one another: just as I have loved you, you also are to love one another.   John 13:34

Note: A version of this story first appeared in 2015