DAY 16
October 19, 2006

I thought the walk might be over today. Yesterday, my wife found a lump on our 13-month-old daughter’s neck. She took her to the doctor and they thought it might be cancer. An ultrasound today made it seem even more like cancer, so Kristen took Eliza to a specialist this evening. Thankfully, he said her blood count doesn’t look like cancer. She’ll be treated with an antibiotic for tens days. If there’s no improvement, the doctors will remove the lump and do a biopsy. Although it now appears that she will be fine, all day I couldn't help but contemplate the worst.

I called Kristen and told her I thought I should come home. But Kristen is stronger and smarter than I am and she said I should keep walking until we know for sure what’s going on. I agreed, but I still felt guilty. I wasn’t there for Eliza’s first 11 months of life. Now I’m not home to comfort and help my wife during this trial.

According to some statistics Kristen found, only one out of three infants survive leukemia, the kind of cancer we were worried Eliza might have. As I walked today, I contemplated the real possibility of losing my daughter. I couldn’t help but make some comparisons.

For instance, although there is a slight possibility that Kristen and I might have had to say goodbye to our daughter this year, there have already been over 70 couples who have had to say goodbye to their children this month because of the war in Iraq. As I worried about my child, I knew that there were, on average, three families who lost a son or daughter in Iraq today. Who knows how many thousands of Iraqi parents have lost their children?

Another observation struck me. When someone dies from cancer, or a car wreck, or a farm accident, or anything else, we mourn them, we eulogize them, we honor them. But we don’t assume that they died for us or for our freedoms. When soldiers and civilians die in Iraq, some feel they must attach meaning and purpose to the loss of life or else they will not have honored the fallen properly. But the truth is we can honor those who have died without honoring the war that took them.

I’ve received a few e-mails saying that I am disgracing those who have died in Iraq because I’m saying the Iraq war is wrong. The e-mails conclude that if the war wasn't for freedom, then the fallen soldiers must have died for nothing. To those who want to believe in this war, this is an extremely offensive idea. However, good people die everyday in a thousand different ways. They don’t die for any cause or for glory, they just die because it’s the fate of all mortality. There is no dishonor in this.

I’m praying with all the energy of my heart that the antibiotics will stop the growth on my little daughter’s neck. But if my daughter died, I would still love her and honor her, even though her passing would not protect or save me from anything. I’ve begun to think that it’s offensive that we feel we can’t love and honor fallen soldiers unless we attach a personal value to their death. “They died for our freedoms. They died to protect us.”

It’s been a long day, and I wanted to go home so much. I’m going to take my wife’s advice, however, and keep walking. I'm so thankful that Eliza's lump doesn't appear to be cancerous. When I think of the painful emotions that Kristen and I contemplated today, my heart breaks for those who must face them in reality. If we all felt the loss of life in Iraq like the parents of the fallen, we would demand peace. We would have peace.