Love is the Answer

I was at a friend's house last night and as we chatted she handed me a book she'd been reading.

It was a health and wellness book to do with healing certain pains or afflictions in the body.

There were included in the book positive affirmations that were touted to help with healing.

A specific affirmation for each specific ailment.

As I got to flipping through the book I noticed a similarity in the affirmations.

Love.

They all mentioned love toward self or others as a healing mechanism.

A couple months ago a dear friend of mine was diagnosed with stage 3 melanoma.

My sweet friend also happened to be expecting her 6th child, making any sort of treatment dangerous for the baby.

They quickly realized the cancer was growing much more rapidly and was in far more tissue than they had anticipated.

Over the weekend they found it had spread ever farther, to her liver and spine.

Doctors are giving her about a week until her liver could fail.

Difficult decisions were made and they are delivering the baby, a little boy, as I type.

She's a mere 26 weeks along.

When I got news earlier today of the situation I made a bee line to the hospital to see her.

It was about a 45 minute drive and the whole way tears flowed as I tried to come up with some words to say, but nothing came.

Then it hit me, she didn't need me to say anything at all, she only needs my love.

I was literally shaking on the elevator ride up to her room, I was petrified to see her in a bed, hooked up to morphine.

But when I walked in the room I was filled with immediate peace.

Her gorgeous skin glowing like it always does, she looked like an angel.

I walked over to her bed and just grabbed on to her, I didn't want to let go, not ever.

She quietly told me to come lay down by her.

She didn't have to ask me twice, in a second I was curled up next her and I just held her and cried into her hair.

 I don't know how long we stayed like that.

We spoke a little, but I can't even tell you what we said.

Mostly I was just trying to spill out as much love as I could, hoping that it was true, that love could heal.

I was wishing more than anything that I could take this monster away from her, that love alone would be enough to keep the momma of all those babies with them.

To spare her sweet family the pain that the next little while will hold. 

Then, instead of me being the one to speak words of comfort, the next thing I know she's telling me all about it.

All about the plan God has for her, all about His love for her, and that she'll soon be in His arms and that it's enough.

The dying comforting the living.

The morphine taking the edge off her pain, but doing nothing for mine, or her husband's who stood in the room and watched me bawl like a baby.

Time is a funny thing.

I felt like I could have stayed there forever, never letting that moment end.

But all too soon the clock says it's time to get my kids from school and then music lessons and then dinner and bedtime and on and on and the precious moment is gone, like a sigh into the dark night.

I sit here thinking love really is the answer.

It's the love we have in this life that makes it even worth living.

It's the love of friends, children, parents, sisters, brothers, and every other kind of person that can possibly be in our lives.

We take the love with us everywhere we go.

My friend's love will stay here in the hearts of all the people she loved long after she's gone, I'm honored to be included in that group.

And when our time is come she'll be there waiting for each us us, waiting to claim that love she left behind and then to make it grow into infinity.