The cages

She's in a cage, a cage-like-bed, but still a cage. I'm sitting here in a hospital room staring at my little girl who's fast asleep, chemo running into her body, blanket pulled up to her face, lying peacefully in her caged crib. Sometimes she'll moan a little bit and I'll jump to see if she's waking, only to find her soothing herself back to sleep. The inpatient days drag on at an agonizing pace, you start to feel these walls closing in on you as the world outside feels like a paradise you can't ever seem to reach. As I stare at her lying in that bed with IV lines coming out of the bottom of her tiny shirt, she suddenly seems so little. Too little to be enduring such a horrible physical battle. Sometimes I am convinced that God has allowed me to enter into this journey with her to let me see what angels might be like....for she certainly is one of them. I am so enamoured by her strength and it humbles me daily. There are days where she's irritable and screams incessantly and the human part of me wants to break down and shush her, but then I remember that she can't communicate her pain in any other way than by crying. Her little body must hurt, ache, and tire and there's probably days where she's doing all she can do to just make it through without completely breaking down. I forget sometimes how much she must hurt and I'll probably never know all the battles she's really fought. She can't tell me, "Momma, it hurts", so she buries her head in my shoulder and cries. There are days where I can't walk two steps away from her without her screaming out for me and sometimes her dependence wears on me, but then I remember how scary all this must be to her. And to be able to be her comfort, her peace, her shoulder to cry on; I feel eternally blessed. That's not to say that any of this is easy because it's not. There are nights where I honestly can't find it in myself to even bow my head in prayer, as backwards as that might sound it is the truth. There are days where my attitude is not positive and my behavior is not the most pleasant, but I'm starting to realize that the bad days are just a part of it. Fighting seems to be the answer. Fight through the notion to think I can do this alone, fight through the temptation to lose my patience, fight through the pain of watching my little girl suffer. For as caged as I might feel in this world of emotional instability that has now found a home within me, her world is so much harder. And knowing that her body aches and her tummy hurts and her legs won't work the way she wants them to sometimes humbles me where I stand. For she still gets up every morning with a smile on her face and she refuses to let her burdens get the best of her. What excuse do I have? I look in the mirror and ask myself that question quite often, what excuse do I have to complain? None. So I'll just fill her little life with as many happy memories as it can hold, hanging on to the promise that one day she will be free. Free from this cage, from this pain and suffering, free to just be a little girl....a little princess. But for now, she'll shine; an angel amongst us in the darkest of times. All along teaching her mommy how to walk through the hard times. Knowing one day that we will break out of our cages together.