5 Minutes at a time - Amelia part 1

Last year a young lady Kayley followed me on instagram, as I am, I check out people before I say they can follow me and I have no idea how she followed me but she did and my life was changed forever. I followed her back (something I don't automatically do) and we got to talking. Firstly just in responses on posts, then in DM's and then by email....from approximately the start of May last year (2015) I started writing to Kayley almost every day by email. See this girl had Leukaemia and was really sick. The entire time I knew her she was in hospital. To be honest, what started us talking privately was that I wanted to buy her a colouring book! We worked out how to get it to her but then the first of many hurdles in my time came along and she was on the ventilator....her parents not knowing whether to turn it off or keep fighting...things weren't looking good. But she is an absolutely fighter. So after a bit we exchanged our REAL names and hers is Amelia Kate. Perfect for her :). Amelia was only 16 when I met her but she had started towards her dreams of working in the medical field as a paediatric nurse or doctor. I would email her just about the randomness of my day trying as best as I could to be supportive but also bring a little of the outside world into the ICU where she was caged. She fought so hard every day, in so much pain and so sick and so many struggles, but she kept going.

She was of huge encouragement to me, wanting to know what I was planning to do with my life and what I was doing to get there. She believed in me. She believed I could do it. In her final letter she told me not to close my heart but to keep reaching out online because I had made a huge difference in her life. And so I have. I don't know what differences I'm making, I'm just trying to believe that there is a difference being made. It's so hard to believe that we can make a difference in the lives of people we've never seen face to face but I can tell you that she was just as much my sister as my actual sister. In her final email to me she wrote that she had hoped that I would meet her face to face on this earth (and how I LONGED for that too) but that apparently God had different plans for us. So she's with the faithful now watching over me in the cloud of witnesses.

Amelia died on the 16th December at 5pm when complications from the leukaemia claimed her life. All day I felt my heart breaking waiting and hoping for the message that a miracle had come through and she had survived but knowing that it was so highly unlikely. And I miss her. I know she is in a better place but I miss her.

So what now? Firstly I heard this song on my iPod which I played over and over again.....for so many people for so many reasons, looking at a whole day is too hard, this song talks about it just being 5 minutes at a time and that is how I've survived so far, just 5 minutes at a time.

5 Minutes at a Time - Superchick
Life is hard, but it's been a little harder than usual lately
I wish I knew why I am struggling through this
What makes it harder is the lack of understanding on my part
Could I have changed this, why am I fighting life so hard?

How long can I survive this? I'm losing the strength to try
Tell me how am I supposed to live through this? How do we get by?

We take one breath and let it out
We take another and maybe somehow everything will work out to be just fine
We take life 5 minutes at a time

One breath and let it out
We take another and maybe somehow everything will work out to be just fine
We take life 5 minutes at a time

Life is hard - it didn't turn out like I hoped it would be
And I don't dare to dream if dreaming leads to this
'Cause when it's left to me, it's hard to see past the sky becoming dark
If it makes no difference, why am I trying to do my part?

I've climbed back from that fall again it feels like a hundred times
How do I believe in a hundred and one when we stumbled the ninety-nine?

We take one breath and let it out
We take another and maybe somehow everything will work out to be just fine
We take life 5 minutes at a time

One breath and let it out
We take another and maybe somehow everything will work out to be just fine
We take life 5 minutes at a time

To go on living when all you've lived for is gone
To find faith when everything you know about life might be wrong
To find hope in the dark, to still believe there's a dawn
This is the courage to make a life, it is the strength to go on

We take one breath and let it out
We take another and maybe somehow everything will work out to be just fine
We take life 5 minutes at a time

One breath and let it out
We take another and maybe somehow everything will work out to be just fine
We take life 5 minutes at a time