So richard and I were presented with an amazing opportunity to participate in a local competition in oct…I know…I am just now getting a chance to write this.

We had no idea what we were signing ourselves up for, but the thought we could spread awareness about CF and possibly walk away with some $$$ for the CF foundation was just what we needed to brave it.

It was CRAZY intense. My sister kindly watched the nursing baby and two munchkins last minute after my mom came down with the crud suddenly. We walked through those doors, hearts pounding, hands sweating, and muttering continually, “its all for ezzy, its all for ezzy”.

After our dishes were served, which I have to say the pistachio salsa we made for our stuffed pork tenderloin was the winning element along with Harney & Sons Tea (served in ezzy’s enzyme bottles)which really brought our cause home. When the winners were announced it took every single bit of strength to hold back the tears that were forming. Its all still a blur, but the overwhelming support, love and genuine interest was/is a reminder of why we live here in this small community. Countless hugs, hand shakes, even tears from complete strangers kept us there well after the competition ended. We came home after 4 hours of being away in complete awe. We held our stubbornness, hot headed tempers that come out under stress and worked effortlessly as a team. When he moved to the left, I moved to the right, when he was chopping, I was stirring. Little words came out of our mouths, we literally became one body.

The hardest part was to have to wait 2 weeks till the finale.

When we yet again received our list of required ingrediants to use in the upcoming event, the stress started to build UP. It seemed like we had used up all our ideas and I was at a complete loss. It was so much harder to try and prep this time around.

One thing I knew for certain was that I was suppose to share a song that carried our family through the dark first few months of ezzy’s diagnosis. When I felt the idea tugging at my heart and obnoxiously consuming my thoughts, I sat down and listened to the song over and over again until I could hear the notes well enough to figure it out on my guitar. For the life of me I couldn’t find the chords ANYWHERE.

The competition started with Richard and I realizing all to soon we were in over our heads. Our fellow competitors did not appear to be the amateur cooks that we were. We had hiccups along the way and unfortunately didn’t serve food that I felt we could stand behind. But before we served the food we used Richard’s awesome idea to find candy that looked like all of the pills ezzy takes before meals and we served those to each judge and asked everyone to take them in honor of ezzy. I then grabbed my guitar and went into autopilot mode. I blocked everyone out, I know bad right, but its how I survive each sunday leading worship. I mentally can’t acknowledge the people or I FREAK OUT. Before I knew it I was done singing the song, tears running down my face and knew that no matter what, we did what every parent of a CFer should do, we advocated and educated people on CF.

When the winner was announced, yeah, sure I was a little disappointed. I wanted so badly to hand over a big check to the CF foundation, I wanted to one day say that when the cure is found, that we did everything we could to help. Just when the show was about to end, the winners grabbed the microphone and announced they were not going to walk away with all the proceeds but instead split it evenly with all the competitors!!! To top it off the very person who made this announcement then approached me afterwards and told me that he was going to have us on his radio show and that there was no way of getting out of singing the song I shared.

I just had the opportunity today to send off the big fat check along with a few pictures of the competition to the CF foundation. I sat there writing out a little note with ezzy sitting next to me, laughing and pointing at the pictures of her mom and dad wearing what she calls our “ezzy shirts”. I held her close and told her that one day…one day she is going to breath just like you and me.