Life Lessons

Sometimes it takes a big event in life to open your eyes and see that your life isn't as bad as you

may have thought it was or you may think you need to make some changes in your own life. While

looking back on my life, I recognize one event that made me realize I really needed to change my

relationship with my parents. In the year 2003, my father was diagnosed with lymphoma, a type of

cancer in the neck, that really affected my family, but more than anything it affected me. Since my

father was diagnosed, my life has changed dramatically in the last seven years.

Before my father had cancer, my life wasn't terrible, but it was definitely not where I wanted it

to be. I was ten years old and I was just going into fifth grade, which was not easy because that was my

first year of trading classrooms and having lockers. At age ten, my personal life was chaotic, with afterschool

activities and just being a child taking up most of my afternoon time, I rarely had the time to sit

down and talk to my parents about school life. With school and other activities consuming most of my

time, my relationship with my parents wasn't as strong as it should have been. My father and I had a

better relationship than my mom and I, but I still didn't spend a lot of time with my dad like I should

have. I wasn't a "bad" kid, but I knew that I needed to change something in my life so I could have that

special relationship with my parents, but at that point I was ten and really didn't care much about

changing that.

Going to church to worship God every Sunday was just another one of those routines my family

had. I have always grown up attending church every Sunday and then normally going to some kind of

youth event that night that my parents held for 7-12th graders. I loved attending those events every

week, but it was just one of those things that I knew I had to go to if I liked it or not. It was an obligation,

not a thrill. As a child, we were taught that we need God in our hearts in order to be able to go to

heaven when we die. We were also taught that when we ask forgiveness He takes away all of our sins,

which was an amazing feeling because I was only a child and loved to lie; so knowing that God loved me

every waking moment kind of shocked me. But I was just a child and would only be shocked by

something like that for a short period of time. In general, all of this "not caring stuff" caught up to me

and two weeks before Christmas is when I felt like I had just run into a brick wall. Right then and there I

realized that spending time with my family was something I should do every day and attending church

shouldn't just be a routine I do every Sunday, it should be something I enjoy to do and look forward to

doing with my family. Getting those test results back was the worst feeling I had ever had and the only

thing going through my head was, "why my dad?"

Christmas was not very easy that year, my dad had just gotten