Sometimes I feel like I don’t do anything bad at all. And then bad things happen to me anyway. I don’t know why they happen, but I do know that I have to overcome them. During my life a lot of things happened to me that I had to overcome. But something that has affected me most was my brother’s sickness during my childhood.

On a regular sunny day me and my brother would play soccer outside and pretend like we were professional athletes. I would be Messi from Barcelona and he would be Ronaldo from Real Madrid. We would pretend like we played in a big crowd and yell goal really loud when we would score. These days were great, nothing could end them. Until it did. We were in the third grade when my brother all of a sudden started to feel very sick. At first we thought that it was some type of cold, but it wasn’t. He couldn’t breathe and looked really ill. The doctors had told my parents that he may end up using a wheelchair since he was so sick.

I couldn’t picture my brother in a wheelchair. He ran outside with a soccer ball outside every day, His health wasn’t bad at all. All of a sudden some kind of illness strikes him? It made me think why God would punish us this way. My brother didn’t do anything wrong, so why is he having health problems. Nobody in our family has any health problems, except for my brother.

The illness got to the point where he would cry because he couldn’t bear the pain. My parents then found out that his health was getting even worse. He stopped eating regular food. At that time I was participating in after school activities, but I quit all of it so I could be by the side of my brother. It was tragic seeing him with tubes going through his nose all the way in till it reached his stomach, he would go to sleep because they gave him immense drugs to block the pain. I was speechless and couldn’t say anything that would help him. From that day on I started to appreciate what I had. As days went on, my brother was taken to a hospital so they could give him better care. He didn’t want to be there. He would cry before most of my family would go home. My dad would stay and spend every night so he wouldn’t be scared.
It was tragic seeing him with tubes going through his nose all the way in till it reached his stomach, he would go to sleep because they gave him immense drugs to block the pain. I was speechless and couldn’t say anything that would help him. From that day on I started to appreciate what I had.

A couple of months went by and we started to receive words that things are getting better. We would come to the hospital and see him eat and smile. I would visit him three to four times a week. I remember bringing a soft baseball sized ball to play catch with him in the hospital room. I noticed that his movement and reaction time was getting better.

When my brother was starting to feel better, and eating like everybody else it was time to take him home. When he arrived in a wheelchair, our whole family and relatives where there to meet him. He was full of smiles and happy to be home already. After a couple of days he went outside and started walking and running again. His recovery was speeding up. My brother and I started to go outside and play some soccer. Playing soccer meant that he had made a full recovery.

My brother’s illness made me realize that God did that to make us appreciate what we have. We need to thank him for our health and all the other great stuff he have. At this moment my brother is healthier than me. And I am pretty healthy. The illness my brother had made us stronger as a family. It made us care about each other more.