Maren Jones

"You can’t change the way God wrote your story, but you can embrace it." These are the words of a poster hung on the door of Room 17 at Cincinnati’s Ronald McDonald House. This poster is the work of 15-year-old Maren Jones of Howell, New Jersey. A guest at Ronald McDonald House, Maren is an inspiration to others in the House. Maren explains that the words on her poster are also the beginning of a book she is writing. She says she would like for her book to serve not only as "an inspiration for other sick kids," but also to "help people who’ve never been sick understand what it’s like to be a sick kid."

BriaShortly after her birth, Maren was diagnosed with persistent cloaca, a complex anorectal and genitourinary malformation. Since age two, Maren has been a patient of Dr. Alberto Pena , Director of the Colorectal Center at Cincinnati Children’s Hospital Medical Center. Maren and her family have been to Cincinnati’s Ronald McDonald House more times than Maren can even recall as she has continued to undergo life-saving medical procedures.

Maren turned 16 this December. Unlike others her age, she is not attending high school worrying about what to wear to homecoming or whether she’ll soon have a car to drive. Instead, Maren is being home-schooled at Ronald McDonald House while she awaits a kidney transplant, a procedure she says, rather matter-of-factly, "will be my 30th or 31st surgery."

Despite the difficulties surrounding her illness, Maren stays focused on her writing and her long-term goals. She uses her journaling and her poetry writing as a means to "get out all my thoughts." Maren says, "I write about general life, things people take for granted but shouldn’t. For me, being sick makes me different and unique; it gives me a chance to make other people like me believe that there is no reason to hide that (illness)." Maren firmly believes, "There must be a reason for me to still be here and God not taking me back."

Maren has quite a lengthy, and lofty, list of goals. "I want to go to Juliard," she says. "It’s my dream to sing on a big stage or to be on television. I would love that." Maren did recently perform on-stage. She and her friend AJ, another guest at Ronald McDonald House, were in the House theatre playing and singing. "About 20 people came out to hear us," explains Maren. "So, we put on a musical performance."

Families, staff and volunteers at Ronald McDonald House all know Maren well. Her enormous smile is her calling card as she cheerfully interacts with the other children in the House. Whether she’s playing peek-a-boo with a toddler or shooting pool with another teenager, Maren always has her trademark smile, which even she admits is "larger than life."

Maren says she subscribes whole-heartedly to the adage that "Life is not measured by the breaths you take, but by the moments that take your breath away." Any visit with Maren is certainly one of those "moments."

On Friday, October 5, Maren Jones seemed three feet off the as she exclaimed, "They have a kidney for me." Since recovering from a magnificently successful kidney transplant, Maren has returned home for the holidays and looks forward to her first big trip to Orlando’s Disney World.