When I Lay Me Down to Sleep
For just a moment remember back to "yester year" as a little child, 5 or 6 years old. You’re sporting your favorite Ninja Turtle footie pajamas and tucked cozily into your trundle bed or knelt beside it to utter that childhood bedtime prayer,
“Now I lay me down to sleep. I pray the Lord my soul to keep. If I should die before I wake, I pray to God my soul to take.”
As I write it now, my heart sinks and chills ripple through my body realizing that for some this prayer might not be answered. It’s a harsh non-sugarcoated reality that I often take for granted, the simple blessing that it is to wake up each day, healthy. So, the remainder of that Child’s Bedtime Prayer that we so often forget is this:
“If I should live for other days, I pray the Lord to guide my ways….Bless my friends, the whole world bless; Help me to learn helpfulness.”
So, today we live for other days and together we can make a difference. One day cancer won’t be to blame for unanswered prayers. I truly believe that in my lifetime we will find a cure for all cancers and how incredibly empowering it is that we get to be a part of that?! As this 10 week LLS Woman of the Year Campaign comes to a close I need your help more than ever!! So, please join me in the fight and make your one time donation to sheLLS angels: https://www.mwoy.org/pages/nca/dcmetro15/cshell #SomedayIsToday
Each year The Leukemia & Lymphoma Society (LLS) launches its Man & Woman of the Year fundraising campaign, and I have been nominated as a Woman of the Year Candidate for 2015. During this campaign, which is 10 weeks, my goal is to raise $100,000 with my team SheLLS Angels, to benefit LLS’s longstanding mission to find a cure for blood cancers and improve the quality of life of patients and their families.
Maybe you’re reading this message and have never lost a loved one to cancer,
Or maybe you know the feeling of waiting for your prayers to be answered.
So whether you’ve sat in that seat as a doctor told you “the news”
I’m sure every one of us can imagine the fear we’d feel in those shoes.
So although my Grandmother, Claire, didn’t survive her fight,
I’m doing this Campaign so that others might.
My grandmother Claire and I share the same last name: “Shell”,
We are also both “C. Shell”, if you couldn’t tell.
So, in honoring the name my Grandmother shared,
I want you to consider the story of a Starfish and a boy that cared.
An old man wandering on the beach came across a little boy throwing beached starfish back into the sea,
The old man asked the little boy “What are you doing, what could the purpose of this be?”
The little boy replied, “The starfish need oxygen or they’ll die here on the shore!”
But the man said, “You can’t possibly save them all, there are thousands more!”
The boy paused; bent down again, picked another up because he surely wasn’t done,
Then will a smile on his face, flung the starfish back into the ocean saying, “I mattered to that one.”
With your support, LLS can continue funding critical research as well as providing outstanding patient services. Please know any amount will help and each dollar matters; here are some examples of the difference you can make with your fully tax-deductible donation:
- $1,000 allows LLS researchers to isolate T cells from a patient’s blood to be used in a promising experimental immunotherapy clinical trial.
- $750 funds targeted whole exome sequencing in 1 patient to discover common mutations.
- $500 provides support for a week for LLS clinical specialists.
- $200 supports a research fellow for a day.
- $50 helps LLS to advocate for policies that improve blood cancer patients’ access to care.I want to thank each and every one of you for your generous support of The Leukemia & Lymphoma Society. If you have any questions or ideas for my campaign, please don’t hesitate to email me at [email protected]
My Sincerest Gratitude,
Christie Shell
2015 National Capital Area Woman of the Year Candidate