Breaking Through

I'm sorry it took me so long to finally get this finished. This is really only a snippet of the hundreds of photos that make up the past years and tell our story. Danica LOVES this Toby Mac song and especially dancing around while singing it in her sweet voice. I dreamed and dreamed of having a big celebration party when we reached this point in healing. It turns out God has a little bit further for our family to go. We still believe what sometimes seem like curses are truly God's way of blessing us more than we could have imagined and pointing us continually to the story of REDEMPTION and forever healing in His Son.

"When you realize that the story of your life could be told a thousand different ways, that you could tell it over and over as a tragedy, but you choose to call it epic, that’s when you start to learn what celebration is. When you see in front of you is so far outside of what you dreamed, but you have the belief, the boldness, the courage to call it beautiful instead of calling it wrong, that’s celebration. When you can invest yourself deeply and unremittingly in the life that surrounds you instead of declaring yourself out of the game once and for all, because what’s happened to you is too bad, too deep, too ugly for anyone to expect you to move on from, that’s that good, rich place. That’s the place where the things that looked for all intents and purposes like curses start to stand up and shimmer and dance, and you realize with a gasp that they may have been blessings all along. Or maybe not. Maybe they were curses, in fact, but the force of your belief and your hope and your desperate love for life as it is actually unfolding, has brought a blessing from a curse, like water from a stone, like life from a tomb, like the actual story of God over and over. I would never try to tell you that every bad thing is a really good thing, just waiting to be gazed at with pretty new eyes, just waiting to be shined up and- ta-da!........there is something just past the heartbreak, just past the curse, just past the despair, and that thing is beautiful. You don’t want it to be beautiful, at first. You want to stay in the pain and blackness because it feels familiar, and because you’re not done feeling victimized and smashed up. But one day you’ll wake up surprised and humbled staring at something you thought for sure was a curse and has revealed itself to be a blessing-a beautiful, delicate blessing." Shauna Niequist, Cold Tangerines

My suboccipital decompression, reduction of basilar invagination and cranio cervical fusion will be performed by Dr. Fraser Henderson Monday, November 21st, at Doctor's Community Hospital in Lanham, Maryland.  Our hope remains!

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Acceptance-with-Joy

Faithful friends, a year ago I wrote this about being afraid and looking for life in a desert place. Please link to read it again. I humbly lay here today and give God all glory for the miracle in Danica's life and the change in our hearts as we have surrendered to His loving plan. Today our girl is without a brace or collar. Her fusion scan on Tuesday in Cincinnati showed better results a year later than anyone in her medical team could have hoped for. I have some beautiful photos I am putting to music and will post them here in a few days. These months and years have surely not been wasted time. Each day has been redeemed by Him. Won't you praise Him with us now?

I am not quite ready to post in depth about my diagnosis and proposed treatment. I am still processing much of it and am truly in so much pain and mental confusion and fatigue that I have trouble writing. Simply, I need surgery similar to what Danica had a year ago. I need it soon (as in the next few weeks) in Maryland. With no pride but only amazement I can tell you there is no more theater of what-ifs. Truly God has been preparing me for this for a long time. Along with my friend "Much-Afraid" I can say about this journey:

In all that great desert, there was not a single green thing growing, neither tree nor flower nor plant save here and there a patch of straggly gray cacti.

On the last morning {Much-Afraid} was walking near the tents and huts of the desert dwellers, when in a lonely corner behind a wall she came upon a little golden-yellow flower, growing all alone. An old pipe was connected with a water tank. In the pipe was one tiny hole through which came an occasional drop of water. Where the drops fell one by one, there grew the little golden flower, though where the seed had come from, Much-Afraid could not imagine, for there were no birds anywhere and no other growing things.

She stopped over the lonely, lovely little golden face, lifted up so hopefully and so bravely to the feeble drip, and cried out softly, “What is your name, little flower, for I never saw one like you before.”

The tiny plant answered at once in a tone as golden as itself, “Behold me! My name is Acceptance-with-Joy!“

Much-Afraid thought of the things which she had seen… Somehow the answer of the little golden flower which grew all alone in the waste of the desert stole into her heart and echoed there faintly and sweetly, filling her with comfort. She said to herself, “He (the Shepherd) has brought me here when I did not want to come, for His own purpose. I, too, will look up into His face and say, ‘Behold me! I am your little handmaiden, Acceptance-with-Joy.’” -Hannah Hurnard