The marvel that is Landrey Eargle cannot be overstated.

Like many of you, I've read Kristen Eargle's blog "Ruler of Hope" chronicling the life of little Landrey, Kristen and Austin Peay Running Game Coordinator and Offensive Line coach Joshua Eargle's tiny miracle. The sheer number of times medical professionals, some of the best in the business, had no explanation for a sudden, rapid improvement or sudden, rapid decline in Landrey's condition during her almost six years of life are a roller coaster the likes of which I simply cannot imagine. It's at once inspiring and anguishing, pairing unyielding hope with the deepest possible despair.

It's a burden unfair to place upon any set of parents, the inability to find answers for a child's suffering. Earlier this year, Landrey was identified as the first person in the United States and just the fourth worldwide with a rare mutation of the CSNK2B gene; it's the nearest the Eargle family has gotten to finding an answer for every struggle Landrey has been forced to endure, from spending the first 73 days of her life in critical care to open heart surgery at two months old to numerous stints in intensive care units from Texas to Tennessee.

However, that answer has no answer. The mutation of CSNK2B has no cure. There's no path for success, no well-trod recovery road by previous examples of people who have overcome this to lead their normal lives—just a pair of case studies from 2017 linking two of Landrey's four major illnesses to this gene. The answer they sought for so long may have brought to close one set of questions but opened up so many more.

The Eargles are two of the proudest people you'll ever meet. There is a toughness and resilience in that family that extends beyond the ability to overcome physical hurts. It's a toughness that's ingrained deep in their DNA, something that has helped them pick themselves up, wipe away their tears and continue to fight for six years.

But everyone reaches a breaking point, and the Eargles had simply reached their wits end financially. They had exhausted all resources, maxed out credit, blown through savings and retirement, anything to try to put a dent into the mountain of medical bills they faced. They needed help; they needed a community of people to be there for them, to reward their faith and to lift them up in a time of need.

"It's hard," Joshua said. "It's hard to admit you need help. For six years, we've been battling to pay off her initial medical bills and luckily we had great insurance; if we hadn't had that, those first 73 days in the hospital would've been right at $1 million. With the insurance, we had a big chunk that we'd been trying to chisel away at and we'd just exhausted everything."

And then a pretty special thing happened.

Kristen's parents, David and Kay Jolley, set up a GoFundMe page to help off-set Landrey's medical debt. Nobody knew what to expect. Anything would've been nice. Anything would've helped.

At press time, the GoFundMe had raised more than $90,000.

"We prayed about it and we talked about it, and even though we put that together, it was still hard," Kristen said. "It's so hard to put yourself out there like that. But the immediate response from people wrapping their arms around us and basically saying, 'You're not alone,'… Landrey's the first known case in the U.S., but she's not alone. We've been blown away. It's just incredible."

The overwhelming support started with the Eargle's Austin Peay family, but it went viral almost immediately. Georgia native and Austin Peay kicker Cole Phillips used his connections in the Peach State to get the Georgia faithful on board. Fans from Tennessee, Texas A&M and Kentucky have chimed in on the GoFundMe board to wish the family well in the fight. Austin Peay parents have raised money selling t-shirts and buttons.

The Eargles have watched this unfold with astonishment.

"We're like everybody else, you get in your own little world and you get self-consumed and you worry about your problems and you think nobody cares," Joshua said. "Everybody has been an unbelievable revelation and example to us about the love humanity can have for one another and how they can share each others burdens. Hopefully, we can be a blessing to others in need; we just want to be a river, not a reservoir. We want to continue to pour out what so many people have done for us. It's been one of the most unbelievable times of our lives."

The outpouring of support has changed the fortunes of the Eargles significantly. The worry is no longer whether they can pay the next bill; the debt is wiped clean, providing the Eargles not only a chance to climb out from under a mountain of debt but also to prepare for Landrey's future. And now, they want to find a way to pay it forward.

"When Kristen and I were in the hospital with Landrey, you see kids born with illnesses every day," Joshua said. "Baby beds in the hospital are never empty; there's always more children than there are beds. We've always had a desire to help others; we couldn't help ourselves at first, but we're hoping with any abundance we can put forth an organized effort to help others in a similar situation."

Kristen already had begun brainstorming ways to help others, even when her own family's needs were very much in flux.

"A couple of months ago I wrote out what a foundation in honor of Landrey might look like if we ever got the chance to bless someone else," she said. "Here I am a couple of months later potentially with the ability to start driving towards that. It's incredible that we will be able to pay it forward and lift that weight for someone else some day, to be able to tell them, 'Hey, we have walked that same walk and cried those same tears and you are not alone.'"

For now, they get to wake up each day and marvel at the way God has moved through their lives. They have been lifted in ways they couldn't imagine. And, hopefully, this moment of grace is only the beginning.

"You've changed Landrey's life forever," Kristen said, when asked what she might tell any individual who has helped the Eargles in their time of need. "You've changed the course of it, what we're able to do and how we can provide for her and keep her safe. You've lifted a crippling weight that was on us. But you've been a part of something bigger than yourself, and I'm forever grateful for that. You've encouraged not only us as a family but people for years to come as people continue to hear and read Landrey's story."

That story is not over. It will continue to inspire, to awe, to fill people with hope and raise them from the depths of their own struggles. Landrey will fight, because that's what she does.

She is an Eargle, after all.