Wow! I’m still walking on air after this morning’s phone call. Dr. John Davids, Chief of Staff at Shriners Hospital in Greenville, called today to let me know that Salee’s little sister, Rusul, has been accepted for treatment! What a dream come true. I was on pins and needles worrying that, after helping to get the care for Salee to be able to walk again, her little sister would be left sitting at home, forever maimed. But, there is now hope for Rusul, too! What a blessing!

Rusul’s right leg was horribly mangled in the same US air strike of November 2006, that took the lives of her little brother and friend, and both legs of her big sister as they were outside of their homes, playing. To imagine children, innocently at play, being hit by missiles paid for by our tax dollars, is heart-wrenching. Can we even imagine how we’d feel (and react) if another nation’s bombs dropped from the sky onto our children? If we ran outside to find them scattered on the ground, blood-soaked and broken? No, we can’t imagine it, yet we’re inflicting this horror on the families of Iraq on a daily basis. The feeling that I, as an American, am somehow responsible for the loss of Salee’s legs, the death of her brother, and the maiming of precious little Rusul brings me such sorrow.

I feel such gratitude to the good people at Shriners Hospital, to the wonderful people of Greenville, South Carolina and Asheville, North Carolina, who are working together to bring Rusul here, and of course, to Cole, for the opportunity to heal some of the wounds that this war has inflicted. For the opportunity to wipe away a tear from a little girl’s face. For the opportunity to become friends to the parents of these children. For the opportunity to remind those Americans who notice that we are one human family.

Because the more who notice, the more likely that people will care. The more people who care, the greater the chance that we’ll stop forever altering the lives of these beautiful children.

I am so anxious to meet our beautiful little Rusul. And to see her smile again.