There are these moments in life when you have absolutely every right to give up on hope, when things suddenly get beyond rough, they just don’t make sense and you feel dragged into a million direction away from anything that has to do with hope or faith. 

As you strive to see the silver lining, you hear the encouraging words, you nod your head and smile and stick to your decision of moving on with your chin up. Maybe not as strong as you seem, but at least you try. 

This picture was us exactly just one week ago, a few days before our son’s big main surgery, a surgery that marks his 43rd time in the OR room, his 4th cancer and his 7th time in the “big” surgeries world. A surgery that marks a journey that exhausted every normal mean of human being possible in our life for more than 5 years. 

It wasn’t that we were fearful, as honestly we weren’t! Not once did we rely on God and he failed us! Maybe we didn’t get the huge big fireworks miracles that we requested, but he resorted to smaller miracles instead that made more sense at the time. He knew that the science breakthroughs and unexplainable change of events that we requested were too big for us, so instead he walked with us and gave us small miracles along the way that made the journey a tad easier. We were scared! That’s for sure but we weren’t fearful…. scared of the known ! We “knew” what’s the worst that would happen and hated that feeling, but again…when did that change anything? When did knowing or un knowing have the power to change the outcome? Either way it is happening… and it is on us to figure our way on how to get there, and when we do… what do we get out of the whole thing. 

Ok that was deep! But hey blame the cancer for that:)

Today and as the hurricane settles, and what seemed and felt like a thunder storm seem to calm down a bit… and right before the rainbow that I choose to know in my heart is about to happen….I reflect back on the past few weeks with all its amazing and drenching moments. The days were we “knew” our son had a growing tumor that is not responsive to treatment, we “knew” there was a major surgery coming ahead of us, we “knew” the expected outcome and we completely 100 percent “knew” what we are up against. Looking at our son as he pushed through -literally- his last days of the school year, striving to enjoy every moment as a kid with a fast growing adult tumor inside him and YET…. still smiling. He “knew” he had a surgery coming up, he hated it, he  was scared of it…. but he knew there was no way around it. He smiled his way to and through it, enjoyed every moment leading to it, and didn’t allow the reality of his life to change his perspective. 

He danced his heart out through every school event and took tons of breaks struggling to keep up with the other kids and YET still he didn’t allow this to stop him! . We knew he was pushing through so hard, we knew there was a tumor inside him but we also knew we wanted him to enjoy every single moment as a kid. 

And to add another new number to our “record” – sarcastic moment here- ….72 hours ago we met our new enemy! We asked to see the tumor live and indeed…the surgeon took us to the pathology lab while Zein was still in surgery. Facing your enemy is such a surreal feeling, your brain tricks you to thinking you know what is coming ahead but you don’t realize how strong you are until you stand face to face with your personal enemy…It was big and ugly and to sum it up…PURE evil! 

Finally, and to put two and two together…the fact that our son was literally fighting a demon with a smile…. puts everything in this life in perspective. 

So my reminder to myself and to the world today is to take every moment all in, to not take anything for granted, to fight as hard as you can, laugh as hard as you can….because there are two ways of dealing with hardships…. 

To give up…. or be a Zein…

So….

Don’t give up! Be a Zein!