When the World Cracks -written by our daughter Jordan Mangum

Mary Deane, six months old, was diagnosed with Cystic Fibrosis yesterday

Dear Life,

Just thinking today of tough things. And how sometimes there's that sound that no one else can hear when your world as you planned it, as you built it, as you carefully fashioned it, breaks apart. Life skips along under the radar until these moments arrive and the door feels like it closes on you and there's only a tiny window that you look out of at the rest of the people "going on like normal". Sadness, anger, guilt, despair, and frustration run through your heart like a parade of pain while you try to make sense of it. Then the window opens and you begin to enter the world again, wary of onlookers and gingerly living to protect what this "crack in the world" rendered suddenly fragile. Then, you get to work, door flung wide, and begin to love fiercely and repair the fissures.

I experienced this at the raw age of sixteen when I rolled our family's suburban full of parents and siblings crushing my sister's pelvis. You can imagine the lengthy ramifications. I remember a lot from this moment, but the thing that sticks out the most was the immediate strength and calm of my mother. She was not afraid, she went to work repairing what had been done. It comes from faith, is driven by love, and denies despair.

Whether you are sixteen and just learning the power of forgiveness, or 26, newly single and re-learning to love and trust, or a young family of six whose daily conversations include the words "after the crash", or a brand new mother of a six-month-old beautiful baby girl with a life-long battle ahead--or approaching sixty and going to bed each night while everyone you love is on the other side of the world waking up to the same day you just lived and you can only watch from that far far distance--you have to open the door wide, let in the love that is offered, and get to work.

Love,