It's been a month since my time at Blue Skies and I still think about it...every single day. Yesterday, one of our guests for the week updated her Caringbridge site with a post about what Blue Skies meant to her and her family. With her permission, I am sharing it here with you. Lynn is a cancer patient and a mom to two young children. Blue Skies has always been a retreat for families of CHILDREN with cancer but the week that I volunteered, there were openings for two more families that were unfilled. This gave the organization an opportunity to extend the invitation to two adults suffering from cancer and their young children. After all, cancer affects the entire family, no matter who the patient is. How awesome that the organization took advantage of an opportunity to expand beyond their previously set boundaries to minister to even more people.
This is Lynn and her Blue Skies Family
And here is what Lynn had to say about her week!
"I wanted to spend some time telling you about my week at the beach courtesy of Blue Skies ministries. You can visit the Blue Skies web page at: http://www.blueskiesministries.org/ to get more information. They are a grass roots - little to no large corporate sponsorship group that is committed to giving families back some sanity during a very hard time. They primarily invite families of children with brain tumors or leukemia, but have been kind enough to invite a few families at each retreat where the parents are suffering from cancer. But it's all about the kids. About giving the cancer patients a fun week to forget about chemo, pain and suffering. About giving children whose parents are sick a week where it's all about them - what they love to do: play! It's about celebrating the siblings from families with sick kids. Giving them a whole week where it's about them, loving on them just as much as their sibling and reminding them how amazing they are. It's an amazing mission and that's exactly how most of the volunteers approach it. It's a mission trip for the whole family, although I would caution that you wait until your children are at least 7ish or older so they understand this is NOT their beach vacation but their "job" for a week.
You will work too. The amazing 120++ volunteers spend a week cooking, cleaning, loving, playing crazy games and did I mention loving us families? They come from Georgia and Alabama and Texas and come with or without a church group. They taught me more about the power of love, kindness and patience than I've learned anywhere. So how does it work?
Volunteers pay $600/person to volunteer. They live up to 3 families per condo for a week. They love it! The kids all spread out on sleeping bags and have an extended sleepover. Volunteers arrive a day earlier than families. When we arrived we were immediately introduced to our "host family". My host families were AMAZING. Karen Leonard and Allison Gruehn were fabulous. Allison is a survivor like me and her 2 kids were the perfect ages to play with Alex and Andrew. Karen and her girls could not have done more or been more gracious. It turns out that Allison's amazing husband, Chris, and I knew one another in middle school! That man put in more sweat equity that week than I swear Skip Gilcrease did! I never saw him when he hadn't been sweating in the Florida sun and didn't have somewhere he had to be in 10 minutes. And, oh yeah, he got the oil changed in my car so we wouldn't break down on the way home. Thank you doesn't begin to sound appropriate enough....
So yes, Blue Skies is a "ministry" so, of course, my Jesus radar was High when I arrived. We've discussed this before and I don't naturally worship like many in the South do. Which is to say I get a little nervous about offending people. I can honestly say I survived and walked away with a real respect with how so many of these volunteers can share their strength and belief in God in such a beautiful way. It is their belief that their God has been good to them and Blue Skies is a way in which they serve him and his desire to see us all help others that need it. I praise them to the highest. I left Blue Skies with so many more pray warriors and strength and love and Facebook friends. Again, I am humbled by all the good in people and how they are neither afraid or too busy to share it with me. For god sakes, they soaked my skanky beach feet in water and painted very same toes. Just because I have cancer. They showered me with gifts and reminded me how important I am to my family and how important my family is to curing me.
I was lodged in an amazing - I swear - luxurious condo with a view of the Gulf of Mexico. I was given a laundry basket for our dirty clothes even though we had our own washing machine and dryer. I told them: "are you crazy? I think I can handle this!" Then I forgot all about it doing it and took a vacation. We had our own "Sparkle team", who had to plunge the toilet my son plugged for the 400th time this summer (seriously? what is up with boys and toilet paper?!!), they cleaned our dishes and put them up from the dishwasher they took the kids' animals and we found them all over the condo doing the most hysterical and g-rated things! They fed us, lunch and dinner, with enthusiasm. We had a parade celebrating the mighty USA, we rode horses, we had a great beach party and we FORGOT ABOUT CANCER FOR A WEEK.
My kids each had a team of teenagers whose sole responsibly were to make sure they felt very important all week - Alex, needless to say, adapted quickly. She ate exactly one meal with us then ditched us for the table with all her new girlfriends. I watched as Harrison, boy wonder, teenager I hope my son becomes one day, kid who rolled on the grass with a kid one day and lead us all in worship on the guitar the next, made Andrew Wyatt feel welcome and one of his group. Andrew never had a chance to be a loner in the pool for long. He was immediately grabbed up into a game of tag, swim races, "master of the rubber ducky float". But it was all the kids we met. I could handle the waves for a just a while, so when I needed to go back in, I looked a young man next to me with a group of boys and asked them to swim and keep an eye on Andrew. Which they did. Then they came over and made sand castles along with someone's dad. Incredible. All of them. I never picked up my beach bag, I never carried anything other than my fabulous hat. My kids played biscuit beach tag and worked fearlessly to lead their Team Green to all kinds of victory in every silly summer camp game they played. I sat on my ass under a palm tree and read a whole book in one week. Divine.
I spent time with all the other family parents and with our fearless leader, Salli Beasley, a Mom whose fought through cancer with her college-age son, who helped us exorcise some serious demons. I learned that I am not alone, that we are all so very scared and that while I hate cancer at 45, I hate it even more at 2, 6, 10 and 13. That as long as I am 5 minutes from Children's and close to Egleston, I will be the servant of my Blue Skies families to be used as their second family. But that god we are a strong group. Everyone of us with all the shit life throws at us along with cancer - dads who couldn't handle the diagnosis and left their wives to deal with it alone. I met some amazing women that I gained so much strength from knowing everything that they were handling because they had no choice. And I pray for them that the world stops throwing shitty police men, pneumonia and bad men their way. I thank God that I have my amazing husband and all that he handles. I thank god for all of you. ALL OF YOU. (Okay, seriously crying in chemo room now).
I owe Blue Skies a debt that, like everything I've received, I can never repay. I want to hold Jennifer Gilcrease in a bear hug that reduces her to a puddle love on the floor. I want to go back and hug Clare, Harrison's sister again for being Alex's BFF, I want to hold Brayden on my lap again and wish him a long healthy life. I want to love on Rebecca's Mom Polly for telling me she thought I was incredible. I want to hang on a patio again with Erika and never have to get up until her baby girl no longer has her 8-year old tumor and I have hair. I want to hear Erika and Alyssa sing Jason Mraz's: "I Won't Give Up" and try to make it through the first line of the song without blubbering. So many gifts that will never be repaid but will be paid forward.
If you are moved by this amazing group, as I was, please consider helping. As I mentioned, they do approximately 8 weeks of retreats each year. They do it with no corporate sponsorship. If you or your company is in a position to help, this, unlike even Susan G. Komen, is a way to see a donation go immediately to the people that need it. Please consider helping.
You can get all their information at: http://www.blueskiesministries.org/ . Melinda Mayton, a full time peds oncology PA is the founder and goes on every retreat. She is a testament to all that say "I'm doing something about this shit." You can find a way to contact her on the website. You can learn how to volunteer and donate. Please consider doing what you can."
Thanks, Lynn for sharing about your experience. I'm ready to go again, how about y'all??? Will you join me?
