Teague: The One-Year Milestone

It's official: Teague has reached the one-year cancer-free milestone. Quinn and I have so looked forward to this day. So many times, we've said, "Won't it be great to hit the one-year?"

The MRI today was of Teague's brain and spine, and both are clean. We are growing used to good news. We expected good news. We had faith that the things he's been promised in priesthood blessings are still in effect and will continue. And I really do think of his cancer as something that happened to him in the past.

But every time we hear the actual results of an MRI, I realize how much anxiety lies just beneath the surface. After we got the results today I cried, said a prayer of thanks in my mind, and hugged my husband and my little boy. I said to Teague, "You are healthy. Your Heavenly Father is taking care of you."

Our trips to Primary Children's always bring up mixed emotions. As we were walking in, I said to Quinn, "I hate this place, but it's a love/hate thing." I always remember what it felt like to live there for 10 days. The stress of not knowing what was next, the sleeplessness, the recovering toddler, the constant intrusions for blood draws and vitals, all of it. That's the hate.

Then, when we were in the neurosurgery waiting room this afternoon, ready to see Dr. Kestle, I remembered the love and the gratitude. My mind went back to the first time we were there, just hours after finding out about the tumor. We were helpless and desperate, and we needed someone to help our baby. They saved his life, and I still can't put into words what that miracle in all of its aspects means. I will never forget.

We had a longer wait time today than we usually do, which gave us more of a chance to look around and notice the other families who were waiting. It was not hard to pick out the little neuro patients. Some kids had an uneven gait or eyes that didn't stay straight or a gigantic scar or a wheelchair. Others were like Teague, pretty much unaffected.

I was reminded how easy it is to think, "Of course the Lord has taken care of my little one." It's easy to marvel that none of the side effects we were warned of have happened. But they do happen to people. We just dodged it because that's what Teague's Heavenly Father has in store for him at this point in his life.

I guess I'm just saying that I'm well aware that there's nothing we've done to make us any more special than those with broken little bodies. I'm sure that our prayers were no more fervent and that our faith was no stronger. Maybe it has even been less so because we haven't been tested as hard or as constantly.

What I do know is this: the Lord loves us all more than we know, and he blesses us all individually. Nobody ever hits a quota of trials in this life; no one is immune to the harshness of mortality. But everyone who will can be sustained and carried, guided, directed, and refined by the power of God.