Happy Birthday, Aaron!



I shared this post over on Instagram too but I wanted to make sure we mark the milestone in this journey as well!

It’s been a busy few days for this guy! Celebrating 100 days post transplant, starting his first year of high school, and turning 15 - all in one week. Whew! Especially now when each one of those milestones is a gift we do not take for granted. 

And all that came after a super busy year! We crammed a lot into the first half - starting a new school last fall (yay USP!), lots of family trips (Disney World!), and his Make A Wish trip (meeting Dude Perfect!)

All of that was packed in before we hunkered down for his bone marrow transplant this past spring. I cannot overstate how much better it is to be on this side of the past year.










Suffice to say, fourteen has been a monumental year for Aaron. He has faced his challenges with a steady determination that has been remarkable to behold. From the moment we knew the transplant was the next step, he fixed his eyes on the hope of its outcome, and he never wavered. I watched him strategize and plan for the worst, watched him learn coping mechanisms to carry an emotional load no child should have to know, watched him dig deep for physical strength and courage in the scariest moments, watched him find glimmers of hope in the midst of darkness, watched as his faith grew and strengthened. It has been a true honor to walk through it alongside him. 





I wrote about Aaron’s steadfastness on his twelfth birthday, long before any of these medical issues were even on the horizon. “One of the best things about Aaron is his constancy. He is who he is who he always has been.” It’s still true, he always has been exactly who he is. But this truth has really been honed this past year. His constancy proved to be the greatest gift in the midst of a trial that mainly required steadily moving forward, step by painful step. The only way out was through.


So while I remember so fondly the memories of an alphabet-loving, precocious bookworm who memorized unimaginable quantities of information and lived in the depths of his own imagination, the gift of Aaron is that when I look up at the young man he has become, he’s still our quirky bibliophile with a deep love of words, memorizing unimaginable quantities of information, building worlds in his imagination and capturing them on the page. He is who he is who he always has been - just with the maturity and depth that life and trials can bring. 


It’s absolutely wild to think we have a FIFTEEN year old. And after all he’s endured, we’re exceptionally grateful to be celebrating him today. Our hope for the coming year is that it’s a time for rebuilding. Rebuilding an immune system, rebuilding a normal life, rebuilding our hope for a bright future.


The journey isn’t over - we know this year of recovery won’t be easy. But we also know that Aaron has already persevered and endured through the unimaginable, and he has come out the other side stronger and more resilient than we could have ever hoped for. 


Happy fifteenth birthday, Aaron! Here's to many, many more. 🥂

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