Offer light for Mikah

I (Jocelyn) will be managing this page for LisaPedersenPhotography. Her words below xo


We are never given guarantees in life.
Life really does just happen, I am a firm believer that our bodies are vessels floating on this earth and it is our due duty to pay attention to the souls around us.
We are meant to act on kindness, to be good to one another and act with our hearts, to give and to cherish moments that can somehow change us.

Eight years ago, my ex husband abandoned our beautiful family. He was finished. I am not going to go into great details but I will go into certain details because they matter in the story I am about to tell.
My children and myself went through immense pain and struggles that would leave me at times wondering how I was going to stand upright, I was weakened, depressed and there were days I could barely get the children to school.
My life had become burdened with such a heaviness and top it off we were destitute.
The Universe then looked down on me and my children and said your vessels will need to sink more, I have still not given you enough heaviness, I know you can handle more adversity. My son and I would both break our legs, he already unable to walk and in a wheelchair I would now need to lug his wheelchair out of my van and then proceed to try to lift him out of my van and get him into his chair in winter, ice and snow.
My vessel was completely submerged and I drowned.
The world was black, I would now need to juggle, court, hospital appointments, the children's school, a new home as my ex husband graciously foreclosed on ours, how would I feed them, how would I now pay rent, clothe them.
Each night I did pray.
I needed a sign. I needed a glimmer of warm light because my entire existence had become cold wet darkness and I was barely hanging on.

My beat up old van would pull up to the school and there I would sit, trying to gather my strength to get my body out behind the steering wheel to balance the wheelchair out of the back of my van, then to open the side door and lift my precious boy out to buckle him in safely into his chair, then to sludge through the snow and ice, get him onto the sidewalk so that his twin could push him into the school.
That was my daily.

One day, there I was parked at school, getting ready to gather my strength.
Tap. Tap Tap........
This man strong in stature, eyes of kindness tapped on my window.
He would next grab the wheelchair out of my van, get my boy into his chair, bring him onto the sidewalk, and he would become my helper, he would not know this but he was my gift of light that I would pray every night for.
He was my life vest, to show me that there is good still.
That if we hang on long enough there will be warm light shown in our darkness.

Eight years later.
My vessel, me, I am older. So very strong, and my heart through every ugliness that was done to my beautiful children and myself, we have somewhere in all of this become givers.
We have reevaluated the importance of what means the most to us, it has become people, to be empathetically aware of the people who may be drowning around us, and to pay attention to how we move our vessels around in the universe, and who we collide paths with.

Several months ago, a woman on an Airdrie forum reaches out. I need the name of a good massage therapist as my daughter is going through chemotherapy and is in so much pain.
I was immediately jabbed in my heart.
I don't have a lot to give, I offer art. My heart goes into a vision, into my camera, to my lens, and then I draw what I envision onto my blank page with my editing software.
That is all I have to give, and I am okay with that it is my gift I carry with open arms.
I shyly message her and tell her I want to offer her some portraits when her daughter becomes well.
She responds but doesn't take me up on my gift.
I don't hear from her.

Last week I did though.
We chat over messenger, she compliments my art, she would love for me to capture her daughters closeness, and that her beautiful daughter Mikah will need to be photographed soon as she will be receiving more chemotherapy on December 30th. She is fourteen.
Well you know the universe?
You know how sometimes we question in our darkness and we ask for light and ease and we beg God to please allow us to come up for air because it is all to heavy of a burden to carry. Why?

I creep Lina's profile.
I go through her profile images and I am stopped in my tracks, and I immediately begin to cry.
Eight years ago, when I needed light and to be lifted out of the heavy waters, my helper?
My helper, Is Lina's husband.

My heart is incredibly full.
This family is warmth, they are love and the goodness in the world.
Their darkness is heavy right now, and it is up to us, we as vessels to lift them out of the waters and allow them to see light and offer them hope. To answer prayers.
A father who lays on the floor beside his beautiful daughter's bed. A family that loves beyond measure.


Please visit this page.
Open your heart and give so that the burden of finances is not in the forefront.
Mikah needs a village of support, and we are the village, the vessels that may glide into their path and be their light.

Mikah's story.

June, 23rd 2019, 1 month after her 14th birthday, Mikah was diagnosed with high risk Acute Lymphoblastic Leukemia.
Her organs and bones were 92% full of cancer at diagnosis...that number still doesn't register in my head.

We were told that day that we were in for the long haul with a min of 2.5 years of chemotherapy treatments.

Sadly Mikah's suffered some extreme rare side effects to the chemo, which has brought with it delays in treatment and even landed in ICU but through it all, she remains positive and has a total "I'm gonna kick butt" attitude!