She is so little for all the machines surrounding in the burn hospital, giving and taking.
Shanghai General Hospital , China
She had suffered through God knows how many surgeries, not to mention the endless skin-graphs.
Did I tell you we met her in China at the burn hospital in Bejing?
So many children, so little time!
Molly
You know the feeling of wanting to take them home with us in.
We brought a big white stuffed dog for Molly.
When our Tyler bent down eye-to-eye with Molly he gave her his high-beam smile (a wonderful gift in itself); then, he took the big dog out of it’s red package and handed it to her.
Tyler
We were all happy-surprised when she reached out on her own to take it from Tyler.
She turned to her mother and hugged her with her dog between them.
Every door in my heart blew open.
I was full of love for Molly, but I had some questions.
When she leaves here will she be stroller’d out into the great outdoors?
As she grows, will she pedal down neighborhood streets on her two-wheeler?
Will the other children accept her?
Will she swing around the pole of parking meters?
When she sleeps will she reach out for stars?
I look at her mother and remembered every emotion rocking her heart.
All I want to do is to sweep Molly up and rock her for a solid month-and-a-half.
dawn
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I want to introduce you to Terry, one of our Burn-Survivors and a Firefighter to boot.
This guy’s a riot!
He’s survived 58 surgeries, and, at the same time, he is just hilarious!
He has personally helped many burn-survivors deal with their scars with humor.
They love Terry.
We all do.
He’s our hero. He is my friend and hero!
“The kids at school would stare at me and call me, “Char King,” he told me, “so I got a tattoo on my arm that says, “CHAR KING,” and beat them at their own game.
In fact, they laugh with me, not at me.”
“I, also, take control of conversations in the hall at school.
I decided it was best for me to tell them what happened to make me look this way, instead of leaving them guessing.
Or, I let them make up their own stories about what happened to me.”
“I figure if I can’t laugh at myself, what have I got?”
One of the things I learned from Terry is that humor helps us focus on what’s good and right with us instead of what’s wrong.a
dawn
#catchingcourage #ryanshines
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The mother in this story is me. Our little family was boxed-in by a fire in our car.
We skidded across the access road off the Interstate and rolled the car three times.
Three of us survived. My seven-year-old son, Ryan, was burned alive, to death.
I realized last night that I haven’t told you very much about our baby boy, Tyler, who was freed from the flames along with Ron, and me. (We three were burned over 25% of our bodies).
This was–no-contest–the worst experience of my life.
Everything in me died on a slab that day, but my breathing wouldn’t quit.
I only wanted one thing . . . to be with my Ry-Ry immediately.
About Tyler.
My 2-year-old gave me the best Gifts of my life. (He’s a sophomore at Auburn now).
He gave his gift every morning of every month of every year after “the accident.”
He saw me beyond his own pain. He saw beneath my scars.
He saw the heart of a mother who didn’t deserve to be called “mother” anymore.
For him, nothing had changed.
We were still Team Tyler!
And every morning he pushed my bedroom door open, he saw the one thing he needed most. Mommy-Me! I was all he needed.
I was haunted by my consummate failure at the ‘’scene,’’ Tyler wasn’t.
I was more than my scars.
That’s what he taught me again and again, and he hardly knew how to talk.
Forget words he knew me ‘by heart.’
I was all-mother, not his ‘scarred’ mother.
I was the mother who knew just what he needed, and when.
He showed me I still had the Goods.
He never once bailed on me while I was bailing on myself every day.
How can a 2-year-old do that?
I think about the ”Little Prince” and what he said, “
It is only with the heart that one can see rightly.
What is essential is invisible to the eye.”
Tyler saw me rightly and I grew into his vision of me.
He took me every day by the hand into the kitchen for breakfast.
Tyler
He led me to the window to show me, in a loving way, that Life goes on.
It didn’t matter to him if I was ready to see it or not. God only knows how saw my strength. God only knows how he knew me.
Tyler will always be God’s best Gift to me!
me and tyler
dawn
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I’m pretty sure you’ve seen a few but you didn’t know what you were looking for.
Wait.
I’m getting ahead of myself.
First, I want to talk about the heroes that have flown in and out of your life.
Think back to Superman, or George Lucas, astronauts or police officers?
How ’bout our World Champion USA soccer team?
So who and what is this new breed of heroes I’m talking about?
These heroes are “Pediatric Burn Survivors”!
They survived the fire that was consuming them and they are surviving the emotional handicap of growing up scared.
But how are these ‘child burn survivors’ heroes?
For one thing, most face multiple surgeries, over multiple years since every growth spurt requires “skin-release’ surgery so they can keep growing.
Next, they take their scars to school with them and are then ridiculed.
Many are bullied or laughed at.
One child I know was tagged with a new name–“Freddy Kruger.”
I want you to take that in and feel the shame that lingers. (And we thought the sky was falling when we had a ‘zit’ on our forehead.)
Catching Courage ’19 Pediatric Burn Survivors
These young burn survivors are heroes because daily they walk into school never knowing who would hurt them with words or everything going on behind their back.
Think about the everyday insecurities of ‘growing up’, especially in puberty.
Then, on top of their fears, add physical deformities.
Be mindful that most of their peers will never understand. Not even me–an adult burn survivor–even I don’t understand.
It’s all so unfair.
CC ’19-Brody and KaleighCC ’19–AlexCC ’19–LovelyCC ’19–Future Firefighter Brantson
These kids are the new breed of “heroes.”
dawn
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A major turning point for me came when I tied together the way Tyler held out his hands to me and the way Jesus held out his hands to his friends.
Focus on those hands for a minute. See the holes in his hands and remember the giant hole in his side from a well-aimed Roman spear? There’s nothing he could do to make the scars go away because, just like ours, his scars are permanent.
Think about the way he honored his scars.
I’m thinking about “Doubting Thomas.” He told them that he would not believe unless he saw and touched the scars. Because somehow Jesus’ scars are at the Center of his life story.
And my scars are the Center of my life story and I can’t get away from them. I don’t need to tell you that people do not want to look at our scars. And they even encourage us sometimes to hide them, as if Jesus wore gloves for the rest of his natural life.
Jesus had scars like ours: Physical scars. Emotional scars. Mental scars. His scars were the proof of his single-minded Love for the whole world.
Our minds don’t tell us the truth always.
But our scars always do.
They tell us what is most perfect about our body and soul.
Take a look at these hands. They could be the hands of your mother. Hands that carried you, changed you and nurtured you. These are hands that have been lovingly lived in. If you look carefully at them, they look like a MAP. With veins like highways and age spots like Scars collected along the way. Hands that have been somewhere and I don’t mean on vacation.
Don’t be taken in by that silly commercial.
The one where a mom and daughter are holding out their hands while the “hypster” asks us if we can tell which is the mother and which is the daughter.
And their point is you shouldn’t be able to tell the difference.
I say that if you’ve completely invested yourself in the life of your family, your hands will tell the truth about you. If you’re a mother, your hands will tell a hundred or more stories.
They get cut and bruised. Scarred. The idea that a mother’s hands should look as young as a daughter’s hands is crazy-sad. In the name of beauty, we try to erase the wear and tear of a person’s body as they grow older. I get that.
Ry and me
But when I look at my hands, I see the evidence of the sacrifices I’ve made, and my Scars are somehow transformed into Badges of Love.
Dawn Raymond Hirn 