Taylor Hendrix and Maggie Pace, ages 12 and 11, respectively, know what it is to battle the giant called cancer.

They also are quick to point out, especially to other children engaged in the same fight, that it's a beatable giant.

"Until I got cancer (Hodgkin's Lymphoma), I didn't know there were so many kids with different kinds of cancer, and I'd never even heard of the kind I had," said Maggie, a fifth-grader at Central Elementary School. "The thing I tell kids going through it is to put their faith in God and leave their lives in his hands. I was really scared when I got diagnosed, but after about a month, I got to the point where I realized that it was OK if it was my time to go. God was in control and I never questioned that."

Maggie's battle with cancer in 2007 included three months of intense chemotherapy followed by 14 rounds of radiation. As of last week, her scans showed she was cancer free.

Taylor, who was diagnosed in 2006 with osteosarcoma, cancer in the right humerus bone in her arm, shares Maggie's zest for life.

Taylor attends Florence Middle School and had never met Maggie until they both landed on the same Web site one day. It was a site designed for children with various diseases, a sort of "therapeutic site" as Maggie describes it.

Taylor was nearly finished with her cancer treatment at Children's Hospital in Birmingham when Maggie began. The two began a friendship that they are sure will last forever.

That friendship includes sleep-overs and weekend activities together and, most recently, a yard sale that the two held to raise money for their Relay for Life team for the American Cancer Society.

The Relay for Life fundraising event culminates at 7 p.m. Friday at the North Alabama State Fairgrounds in Muscle Shoals. Taylor is the honorary junior chairwoman and, along with Maggie, is heading a fundraising team. The girls together have passed their fundraising goal of $5,000. They raised the money through a variety of activities and online. They held the yard sale last Saturday and raised $500. A yard sale they held in April generated $600.

"It seemed like so much money for these young girls to raise, but they took the challenge and ran with it," said Taylor's mom, Tammy. "I'm so proud of them for taking this so seriously and just wanting to put an end to cancer. They've never hesitated to help and do their part."

For Taylor, spending time with Maggie is like having another sister, one who is all too familiar with the emotional aspect of cancer.

"I just have a bond with Maggie because she understands what it's like to have a deadly disease, and most kids our age can't even imagine that," Taylor said. "They shouldn't have to imagine that. I know that until I got cancer, I never thought two seconds about cancer. It never even entered my mind."

But suddenly, at just 11 years old, she was about to enter a world foreign to anything she'd ever known - weeklong stays at the hospital for chemotherapy and virtual isolation from her friends on those occasions when her blood count was off.

Although she missed her friends, it was concern for her family that weighed heaviest on her heart.

"I worried about my mom having to miss so much work and the mounting hospital bills," she said. "She and my dad told me all the time not to worry, but you can't help it. You see the toll something like this takes on your family. And I also thought about what they would do if I died. Sometimes I'd ask God not to let me die, not because I was scared of the cancer, but because of them. I also thought a lot about the things I hadn't done in my life. It just wasn't a good time to die."

Though she still has to be careful with her arm and won't be able to participate in most sports, she's regaining her strength and is considering her other extracurricular options, mainly guitar lessons.

Maggie, like Taylor, is now cancer free. Maggie is encouraged that the type of cancer she had usually doesn't return.

She said the worst part of her ordeal was missing 72 days of school. Her mom, Michele, home-schooled Maggie so she wouldn't fall so far behind in her school work. She not only didn't fall behind, she was inducted into the honor society this year.

Michele and Tammy also have developed a close friendship through their daughters' illnesses.

"There's nothing good about a child having cancer, but in our case, we've been so richly blessed to meet so many wonderful people from around the state, like Taylor and her family," Michele said. "People asked me how I got through it, and I honestly don't know except to say God, family and friends sustained us."

Maggie is regaining her strength and hopes to soon be back playing softball, basketball and taking dance.

"My lung capacity (where the cancer was) is still down so it's going to take time, but I'll get there," Maggie said.

Maggie's mission now that she's met her fundraising goal for Relay for Life is to bring awareness to the need for blood donors.

"At Children's Hospital, kids would sometimes have to wait several days to get blood because there just wasn't any available," Maggie said. "In the time they have to wait, their bodies wear down and it makes a bad situation worse. I wish more people would give blood. I think they don't because they don't realize the importance of it. They haven't seen what I've seen."

Lisa Singleton-Rickman can be reached at 740-5735 or lisa.singleton-rickman@timesdaily.com.