The Fault In Our Stars

The Fault in Our Stars

By: Emily LeSueur

Being a teen is filled with enough angst as it is. Throw cancer and true love into the mix and you’ve got a plot that has sent teens running to the nearest bookstore. The Fault in Our Stars by the award winning author John Green is about the continuous struggles she faces from failing organs to wanting nothing more than to be an average teenage girl.     

Fighting thyroid cancer since she was 13, her days are numbered. The only reason she is still alive is because of an experimental drug. Thinking her life is coming to an end, she attends a support group for  kids with cancer… and her fairytale love story begins. But don’t you worry: this is not the average, sappy love story.

Augustus Waters is almost too good to be true. He’s good looking, sweet and  is a former basketball player who has lost his leg to osteosarcoma. The two have an instantaneous connection, and soon fall in love. In books, love at first sight can be a reality, but what Augustus and Hazel have is special.  Not everyone can understand what it’s like to be a kid battling cancer, so it is like fate when the two of them met.

The two teenagers  go on many adventures, with Hazel’s oxygen tank in tow, trying to make the most of the time they have left together including a trip across the world. Augustus wants nothing more than to give Hazel everything she’s ever wanted, until a twist in fate comes their way. This  leaves their world of love and happiness turned up side down.  

Green does an amazing narration of the ups and downs of these two teen’s lives  and the ups and downs of being a kid with cancer. He will leave you in tears at times from some events, but also in uncontrollable laughter at others from the way he portrays the characters’ subtle humour.  As he portrays the two characters, they are just average teenagers, but with a time limit on this earth. The two’s biggest struggle is not their cancer diagnoses, but how they will allow  their stories to be laid out, and who will be in their stories. The two teens have the choice to put each other in their lives, but they seem to have no regrets,  As Augustus puts it, “You don’t get to choose if you get hurt in this world… but you do have some say in who hurts you. I like my choices.”

The Fault in Our Stars reached the New York times best-seller list, and has incredible ratings. The book attained so much attention that a movie based with Shailene Woodley and Ansel  Elgort making the love story of Hazel and Augustus come to life will be released in theaters June 6th.

Mission Madness: Taking the First Step

This past weekend our youth group participated in Mission Madness. Mission Madness is a state wide youth group retreat where we focus on..well.. mission. The whole theme for the weekend was "Step By Step". We learned to take the first step even if it was out of our comfort zone, and then take each step together with the people we are serving.
We participated in mission sites where we shoveled and spread mulch in a garden that would help feed the hungry this coming summer, another site broke down bikes to be used for scrap pieces to build new bikes for people that had no other way of transportation.  The thing that impacted me the most from the weekend first started out with a short story that one of the leaders shared Saturday Morning before we went to work. Growing up, his family didn't have as much money as others. He received two boxes food every Saturday morning. He didn't think much of those boxes until one Saturday morning in high school when he opened the door and two of his classmates were standing there with the boxes. Those two classmates no longer treated him as one of their peers, they treated him as a project. The people we serve should never be treated as less. We should walk together with them on their journey, not look down on them. I thought about this whole concept and the story that the leader had shared all day while I was spreading mulch. Little did I know that this concept of stepping out and stepping together would soon come to play in my life. As I was eating dinner Saturday night, I recognized a familiar face. I realized it was Maura, a  girl from the Virginia Hydrocephalus group. I had never actually met Maura, but our moms had talked a little online and I had seen her updates on her recent struggle with brain surgeries and hospitalizations. Now If you know me, you know I'm a bit timid when it comes to talking to new people. So Beth and my mom had to talk me in to going up to her that evening. But Boy I sure am glad that those two talked me into it. I didn't know it, but Maura had been searching for someone that understood some of the things she's going through. I was in her shoes of constant hospitalizations just a few years ago. But now since I stepped out, we'll be able to step together in our paths with hydrocephalus. Without all the talk of stepping out and stepping together I probably would have never gone up to Maura. For Maura and I to show up at the same Mission Madness weekend is quite frankly a miracle. God works in mysterious ways to have two teenage girls fighting the same rare condition. He's put me to work even beyond the mission site from last weekend. I hope God will continue to work through me to provide Maura a since of comfort and understanding, and I thank him for putting me for on that mission trip last weekend.

What the Spread the Word to End the Word Campaign means to me...

     Growing up, not only was I labeled as a kid in Special Education by teachers and administrators, but my peers automatically assumed I was something less than them because I was in Special Ed. There was times when I was told you can't do that, you're in "retarded" classes. It was hurtful. I held back tears as they tried to tear me down. It made me feel like they thought I was defective. What they didn't realize is I'm just like them. I'm a daughter, I'm a sister, I'm gifted in writing, I like to hang out with my friends, but most importantly I'm a person.

       You don't even have to use the "r word" in a hurtful way. Behind your friendly face when you use that word, I know you think that people with disabilities are less than you. But we're not.

   We are human beings just like you.  People don't have the right to label you just because of your differences. Everyone has differences, but sometimes our differences stand out a little more. That doesn't mean they can’t do what you can do.  Not only do you hurt people with disabilities when you use the "r word", you hurt the ones that love them. So think before you say, and eliminate the "r word" from your vocabulary. It hurts more than you think.