Elizabeth Edwards in her own words

An accompanied story to Jonathan Alter's living with cancer in last week Newsweek, he interviewed Elizabeth Edwards. Her comments are so inspiring that I want to post some of them here:


(snip)

When I was first diagnosed, I was going to beat this. I was going to be the champion of cancer. And I don't have that feeling now. The cancer will eventually kill me. It's going to win this fight. I come from a family of women who live into their 90s, so it's taken something real from me. There was a time during the day when we were getting test results when I felt more despair than I ever felt in any of the time I had the breast cancer. I have a lot that I intend to do in this life. We're here at the house. I'm going to build paths through these woods so we can take long walks that I intended to take when I was 80. And I have a 6-year-old son. I was going to hold his children someday. Now I'm thinking I have only a slim chance of seeing him graduate high school. How do I accomplish, in what time I've got left, all that I'm meant to do? I'm writing a letter to my kids. It gives them something to hold on to and because you've got to butt yourself into their lives even after you're gone.

(snip)

I had to think about a God who would not save my son. Wade was — and I have lots of evidence; it's not just his mother saying it — a gentle and good boy. He reached out to people who were misfits and outcasts all the time. He could not stand for people to say nasty things about other people; he just didn't want it. For a 16-year-old boy, he was really extraordinary in this regard. I wish I could take credit for it, but I can't. You'd think that if God was going to protect somebody, he'd protect that boy. But not only did he not protect him, the wind blew him from the road. The hand of God blew him from the road. So I had to think, "What kind of God do I have that doesn't intervene—in fact, may even participate—in the death of this good boy?" I talk about it in the book, that I had to accept that my God was a God who promised enlightenment and salvation. And that's all. Didn't promise us protection. I've had to come to grips with a God that fits my own experience, which is, my God could not be offering protection and not have protected my boy.

(snip)


Words don't bother me. If John had pulled out of the race, they (the Limbaughts) would have said, "Oh, he was failing in this race and this was just an excuse to get out." This is a no-win situation with those folks, and you just have to accept it. But what you hate is that other people might listen and say, "Oh, that's right, it's our job to tell them what is right."

More

http://www.msnbc.msn.com/id/17889146/site/newsweek/

Thank you for sharing this. :cry: