Heartbreak

Rose and I belong to a "Life Group" at church. Our church is rather big, so we split up into smaller groups so that we can have people we identify with and we can be like family. Our life group sponsors a missionary family who has had to return to the U.S. because their son has cancer and needs treatment. He's been at Cook's Children's' Hospital receiving some treatments and progress has been made. He's actually been doing quite well. Yesterday, we got an email to tell us that the little boy has gone through another surgery and the doctors think that they got the last of his tumor. This is great news. But the email also came with bad news. A little girl who this family knows through having been in treatment at the same time lost her battle with neuroblastoma on the 29th. The family of this little girl, Grace, has a foundation in her name for the research of children's' cancers. On this website is the story of Grace and her battle with cancer and there is a photo album. Looking at this photo album of this precious little girl brought me to tears. Children with cancer is a soft spot for me. There is research to show that smoking causes lung cancer and sometimes when we make bad choices with our health cancer is a consequence. But children, infants even, who have cancer, have never had the opportunity to make bad choices. They could never have done anything to deserve what they are living with. They have done nothing to cause their eventual death from this cancer. It's a tragedy. And it hurts my heart to think about it.
Now that I'm a father this is even more emotional an issue for me. I think about going through the whole pregnancy, having the baby and getting attached to him and then losing him through a cancer that you can't really do anything about. I can't begin to imagine how that must feel. Truth be told, I hope I NEVER have to experience what that feels like.
My heart goes out to Grace's family. Here is a link to their foundation's website. Please take a look.