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