…and then having to find the strength to climb into her hospital bed, wrap your arms around her, and somehow become the person she still needs you to be.
That’s the reality one Tennessee mother says she’s living today.
This is the first time I’m sharing Jade LaRee Group’s story.
The little girl from Estill Springs, Tennessee has been battling embryonal rhabdomyosarcoma. Now, her family says the cancer has spread to the lining of her brain, a devastating diagnosis known as leptomeningeal disease.
Her mom shared one of the most raw and heartbreaking accounts I’ve ever read.
She says June 1st started like any other morning.
She gave Jade breakfast, her medications, and tried to convince herself everything was okay.
But something deep inside her kept saying it wasn’t.
“My gut was screaming, ‘She is not okay.’”
Even though they had just been at the hospital the day before and doctors told them everything seemed to be going as planned, she couldn’t shake the feeling.
Soon, Jade was barely moving from the couch.
Then came a cry her mother says she’ll never forget.
“It was like a moan mixed with a sob.”
She watched her little girl writhe in pain before calling Vanderbilt Children’s Hospital.
Doctors told her to come immediately.
But she says something inside her told her Jade couldn’t survive the two-hour drive.
She called 911.
By the time they were in the ambulance, Jade was vomiting and crying in agony.
“I didn’t know what to do,” she wrote.
“I felt helpless. So I did the only thing I could do.”
“I prayed.”
Scans later revealed Jade’s brain was swelling.
She was rushed into emergency surgery to place a brain shunt.
Then came the words every parent prays they’ll never hear.
When Jade’s oncologist finally arrived, he explained the cancer had spread throughout her brain.
Her mother looked at him and asked the question she already feared she knew the answer to.
“Is this terminal?”
“Yes.”
She says hearing that single word stole the breath from her lungs.
“I remember screaming at God.”
“‘No, God… no… not my baby.’”
She says she became so weak her mother had to catch her before she fell.
The days that followed were a blur.
She says she barely remembers them.
Then something happened she believes changed everything.
Lying beside Jade in the hospital, she prayed again.
Not for proof.
Not for answers.
Simply for Jesus to be with her.
As she drifted to sleep, she says she suddenly felt someone holding her hand.
She believed it was Jade’s father.
Until she opened her eyes.
No one was there.
“I should have been scared, but I wasn’t,” she wrote.
“One name kept repeating in my head.”
“Yeshua… Yeshua… Yeshua.”
“I believe Jesus was there, letting me know I wasn’t alone.”
At that point, Jade couldn’t walk.
She couldn’t talk.
She couldn’t eat by herself.
Doctors warned her parents this might be Jade’s new normal.
But day by day…
Jade began waking up.
She started talking again.
She asked for one of her favorite treats, chocolate peanut butter.
She sat up.
She smiled.
She laughed.
She eventually started walking again.
Hospice had already delivered a wheelchair to the family’s home.
Her mom says Jade never needed it.
“You can’t tell me God isn’t real.”
Today, Jade’s cancer remains terminal.
Her family says an experimental targeted therapy is now giving them hope, but they know the road ahead remains incredibly uncertain.
Her mother isn’t pretending she isn’t afraid.
She writes that she still cries.
She still hurts.
She still wrestles with the possibility that her daughter may not have much time left.
But she also wrote words that have stayed with me ever since I read them.
“I know sometimes being fully healed means walking through the gates of Heaven.”
“I also know He can heal her Earth side too.”
“What His will is… it’s not for me to decide but to trust it.”
“I’m going to keep trusting.”
No parent should have to prepare for the possibility of saying goodbye to a child.
No three-year-old should have to fight a disease this cruel.
Today, if you pray, please say one for Jade.
Pray for healing.
Pray for strength.
Pray for peace that somehow reaches this family in the middle of a battle no parent ever imagines fighting.