When Eric first got sick I found the quote “your battle is my battle”, and I thought it completely embodied everything I wanted to be as a caretaker and wife. But it turns out it was a sentiment shared by more than just myself.  You know how people use the phrase “like-minded” people? Well I believe I belong to a phenomenal group of like-hearted people.  Our friends came beside us at the beginning and they never wavered, and have never left.

What an amazing blessing to be given the gift of friends who love unconditionally, support unwaveringly, and pray unceasingly. We’ve shared each others heartaches during deaths of family members, miscarriages, job loss, and all the assorted pain that life can bring. With each trip into life’s valleys, we became more unbreakable.

This past weekend, one of our friends completed the Chicago marathon. He ran it in Eric’s honor, and I think that knowledge was probably one of the things that kept him going for the whole race. I know he wanted to quit, but like they’ve done a thousand times before, our friends rallied around the one in need and we finished the race together, one painful step at a time. It was such a tangible expression of the support Eric and I felt along our cancer journey, and finishing the marathon together honestly made me more emotional than I would have expected. (I may have made an inappropriate joke about how Eric quit his race, so Ben had to keep going to prove he was the better man. I’m a horrible person, I know.) The whole race just seemed to mirror the emotional roller coaster of Eric’s illness. Starting the race strong and ready to take on whatever came, then getting discouraged when things went south sooner then we expected, leaning on our support system when it felt like we were too tired to take another single step, and finally completing the race, one way or another. Their battle was my battle, and I am so incredibly proud of both of them.

They fought the good fight, they finished the race, they kept the faith. – 2 Timothy 4:7