My best friend read my blog last night. I woke up to a text that said, "I want an awareness shirt as soon as possible.", and a 5 page text telling me that she looks up to me and feels so blessed to be my friend. THAT is true friendship.
I'm currently wearing a PKU awareness shirt. And after waking up to Arrie's texts, I've decided I'm going to wear one of these shirts to school tomorrow. I'll take one for her and we'll both wear one. Wowzers. I'm scared. I know for a fact I'll get questions and comments on it. That scares me. Really bad. Half of me can imagine myself tearing up when someone asks. But the other half imagines me smiling proudly and saying, "It's my shirt, duh."
My motivation to swallow my pride and wear this shirt tomorrow wasn't only Arrie's amazing words of encouragement and support, but little Jacob Woodward. One of my teacher's sons, Jacob, has cancer. I hate cancer. Jacob's hair started falling out. The chemo will do that to you, that's what I learned from Devin. Jacob shaved his head last week, as did my teacher. What a good dad. That's when it really hit me that Jacob can't hide his disease. His cute, bald head says it all. His cute, chubby face says it all. People will possibly suspect something and he does not have the ability to hide it. Cutest kid ever though, let's be real.
Same goes for my friend, Devin, who I've mentioned a lot in my blog. Not only does he have cancer, but he is blind AND in a wheel chair. People know within the first glance that he is different. I'm very lucky to be able to hide my medical differences. So so lucky. And even though this is so hard for me, I have to keep in mind how blessed I am and thank God every day for that.
So I'm doing this not only to make my best friend proud, but for Jacob, for Devin, and for God. He made me who I am so I could endure this and to be proud of myself. I'm sure He wants me to hold my head high and take pride in my differences, no matter how hard it will be.
Thank you Arrie, thank you Jacob, thank you Devin. I'm doing this for you guys and I'm NOT backing down.
I'm still scared. And I really hope wearing this shirt doesn't bring me down even more. But I'm going to be strong for those little boys. I'm going to be strong for my best friend who is proud of me. I'm going to make her even more proud. I'm going to prove to myself that I am strong- that I can do hard things and hold my head high.
But as of now, I'm just crossing my fingers and I won't stop doing so until tomorrow is over.
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