You are moved, momentarily. You shake your head and offer a quick prayer for Lauren or, more likely, for the blessing of your own kids’ good health. Then you can’t find your keys and soccer practice starts in 15 minutes and you have to stop at the cleaners and your car has no gas, and just like that the story of Lauren Hill retreats to the big warehouse in your head, joining the rest of the jumble. We are so well informed, yet so poorly versed.
You are who Lauren wants to speak with. It is to you she is dedicating the rest of her brief and precious life. Have a minute?
“One January night, I was having a meltdown,” she begins. “I asked God if I could do anything. I didn’t know what He sent me here for. I wanted to know what He sent me here for. Whatever you sent me here for, I’m ready to do.”
Does she have your attention now?
“What keeps me going is remembering why I’m here,” she says.
Lauren Hill is here for all of us. She’s a soul engine, and all she wants to do for the rest of her life is remind us how good we have it, and that we need to make that goodness matter, for everyone. That would include kids with the cancer she has, which is inoperable and incurable and swiftly fatal and receives very little attention.
To that end, she is doing all sorts of interviews, locally and nationally. Her cause has become a phenomenon, its apex occurring Nov. 2 when she plays in her first college basketball game. The game was moved from Nov. 15 at Hiram College to Xavier’s Cintas Center to accommodate a packed house and Lauren’s distilled timeline. The 10,000-seat arena sold out in less than a day.