A Dream Comes True: Jessica Meets Justin Bieber!!

I think I’ve become a pro at delayed posts lately. But it’s better late than never I suppose!

About six weeks back, I posted an image of my sister Jessica that read “HELP JESS MEET BIEBS”, -a campaign if you will, to help Jessica meet Justin Bieber at his concert in Minneapolis. The image went up on Facebook on October 16^th. Between then, and early afternoon the next day, 80 people had shared the photo on their Facebook pages; many of whom, we didn’t even know. It was inspiring to say the least. But the true highlight came when we received an email from an old grade school friend letting us know that she had three meet and greet tickets for Jessica, my brother Justin, and myself. It turns out she’s one of the executive assistants to the President at Paramount Motion Picture Music (very cool!). We were thrilled, and a bit speechless! It was so exciting to know that we got this done for Jessica, but the love and support from others,sudden outpour of sharing, excitement, and ‘liking’ of Jessica & Life, was overwhelming in the most heartwarming way. The power of social media is truly amazing.

On the day of October 20^th, we got Jessica ready and Justin, Jessica and I drove downtown to the Target Center to meet Justin Bieber. Jessica was pretty excited when we arrived to pick up our meet and greet passes. What we didn’t realize was that there would be hundreds of other people waiting to see him as well. We expected maybe 100, but that was way off. In addition to the hundreds of young girls outside chanting “JUSSS-TIN” at an empty tour bus, there were hundreds more inside waiting for the meet and greet passes as well. We waited for a while, making our way through a few different lines. Surprisingly, despite the many people clustered together, no one seemed annoyed or impatient. Everyone was simply happy and excited to be there.

As we got closer, we noticed that Justin was set up at the end of the main lobby in a small area squared off with black curtains. Only a few people would enter at a time to meet him and have their photo taken. People were being taken in in groups of no less than six people, which meant that the one photo that would be taken would have total strangers in it. Slightly disappointing, but what can you do. However, when it was our turn to go in, without even asking, we were told to go in just the three of us!

When it was our turn to go inside, I walked in holding Jessica hand, with Justin following behind us. As we approached the tent opening, Jessica and I both stopped as the crewmember pulled the curtain back and we saw Justin. I looked at Jess as she stood there hesitating and said, “Go on, go say hello!” A second later and with a big smile and a touch of silliness, Justin looked at Jess, threw his hands up and said, “WHHAATT’SSS UUPPP!!” As my brother put it, silliness is basically Jessica’s first language, so he couldn’t have made a better introduction. Jessica quickly waddled/ran up to him and gave him one of her gentle hugs around his waste. Jessica is only 4’6” so her arms literally are at waist height. Justin was really sweet to Jessica and hugged her right back. Justin and I followed behind, introduced ourselves and we all had our picture taken with him. It was brief, but it was all Jessica ever wanted. As we were walking away, I asked Jessica what she thought and she answered in a soft and perhaps awestricken voice, “He was perfect”. But my favorite quote of the night was maybe ten minutes later. As we were walking back to the car, Jessica paused and said quietly, “I think I’m in love with him”. It was so sweet. The way she said it was sweet, her words were sweet, -it was just sweet. And it was the perfect ending to the experience.

Months earlier, I had bought four tickets for the concert so later that evening I took Jessica to the concert with two of my best friends from college, Gina and Liz, who flew in to go as well. The summer before we watched Justin Bieber’s documentary Never Say Never probably three times over one weekend with Jessica. So when we bought these tickets, we were simply just excited that the four of us were going together; we had no idea that Jessica would be in the middle of cancer treatments which made it that much more special. Needless to say, it was an extremely special weekend for Jessica, but it was also special for Justin and me. Life comes with many times of adversity, but to those that are open to it, there is still soo much good.

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