Cancer can do many things. It can shake the foundation of a family, cause people to question their faith, ravage the body, destroy the spirit and ultimately take life. But for Jessica Rees, the one thing her terminal cancer never quite managed to succeed at was ridding her of her joy for life and her love for God.
In his new book Never Ever Give Up: The Inspiring Story of Jessie and Her JoyJars, Jessie’s father Erik Rees gives a painfully honest firsthand account of what his family went through when their youngest daughter was diagnosed with a rare and ultimately terminal form of cancer.
For most people, the term Diffuse Intrinsic Pontine Glioma is a foreign one, a grouping of words hard to pronounce and even more difficult to comprehend. For Rees, the clinical name for the disease that would soon change both his family’s lives and the lives of thousands, if not millions, of others around the world, was one he too had never heard of but would become all too familiar with.
“March 3, [2011] will forever be seared into our hearts,” Reese told Guideposts.org. “It was the day that we heard Jessie has cancer. Words you can’t prepare for, words that you never want to hear, but for whatever reason, we heard them.”
Even for a man of faith, the pastor of Life Mission at Saddleback Church in California, Reese admitted that the news was a big blow. At just 12 years old, his daughter had already begun the fight of her life with the debilitating disease that only 200 children are diagnosed with annually and about a handful have actually survived.
“It was devastating,” Rees said. “It ripped and gripped our hearts in incredibly painful ways, especially based off the diagnosis that there was basically nothing they could do and that the cancer was going to beat her. It was like all of your hopes and dreams as a parent, as a dad, as a family just got taken away from you.”
But for Jessie, a spunky, vivacious little girl who loved cheering her sister on at swim meets, playing make believe with her younger brother and living for the Lord, the monster invading her body would give her new sense of purpose. Soon after beginning what would be several rounds of chemotherapy, radiation, blood draws and hospital stays, Jessie happened to pass by a children’s ward in the treatment center she had chosen as the place to fight her diagnosis.
After witnessing kids her age and younger forced to spend weeks and months in the hospital because of their own health troubles, Jessie uttered five words that would forever change not only her life, but the life of her family as well: “How can we help them?”
That question soon became the heart of Jessie’s battle. Instead of focusing on the grim outlook of her particular form of cancer, Jessie began her mission of helping her peers who were also fighting some form of the disease. What started out as small jars – nicknamed JoyJars for Jessie’s middle name – quickly grew into a social media movement. A Facebook page with thousands of followers hoping to hear how Jessie was faring and to see the results of the jars they’d donated or helped create was updated regularly by Jessie, or her father when she was too weak to type. And the motto “Never Ever Give Up” was soon adopted, one that would be plastered on T-shirts, endorsed by Olympic atheletes and A-list celebrities, and that would become the battle cry for the Jessie Rees Foundation.
For a child, fighting a brain tumor is a difficult thing, but to do it while jumpstarting your own nonprofit, hosting fundraisers for other kids with cancer and crafting special jars and mementos to give to those in need is, well, pretty hard to imagine. But according to Rees, that was just who his daughter was.
“She really loved to bring smiles to other children’s faces,” Rees said. “She was a simple example of the great commandment. She loved God and she loved others. That’s what life is all about but we kind of make it very complex in some ways. She had down days too, but every night she had her devotion with her mom and she prayed for God to heal her. Her faith still inspires me.”
Channeling that faith, Rees wrote this book not only to share his daughter’s light with the world, but also to raise awareness of her disease and the many illnesses children face. “Childhood cancer is out there and it’s painful and it’s ugly but it’s something we have to deal with and try to figure out ways to raise awareness and create advocacy so we can get more funding.”
Rees and his family continue Jessie’s legacy with her eponymous foundation, focusing on raising funds for something that evades too many sick children and their families: good care. “The ability to walk with other families in the trenches and help them and encourage them, provide them hope and support is priceless,” Rees said. “We’ve been very blessed to be able to reach over 100,000 children; kids in all 50 states and 28 countries around the world, but the JoyJars are just the start of relationships with children. They’re never the end game.”
In 2012, Jessie moved to Heaven, just 10 months after first being diagnosed with DIPG. Her journey was hard, messy, beautiful, courageous and inspiring, much like Never Ever Give Up. In the book, Rees shares everything his family went through from the time Jessie first showed symptoms to when she took her last breath, in their home, surrounded by those who loved her. It’s his candidness that makes this biography of Jessie’s life so compelling to read.
“I would love for somebody to be inspired to make a difference with their life,” Rees said. “Not only inspired that a little girl did it, but at the same time, that they would somehow be compelled by Jessie’s example to think beyond themselves.”
If you’d like to learn more about Jessie’s foundation, visit their website at www.negu.org.
