I Am Still Here

It is a quiet morning 9:00 a.m., Selena is still sleeping. She has a terrible head cold that has left her with little energy. The sun is shining through the windows, though it is pretty chilly out side. My heart is heavy, though I feel so content and such peace. That is such a hard feeling to truly describe.

The past few weeks have truly been a rollercoaster of emotions, sometimes these emotions get tangled and twisted to the point I don’t know what I am feeling. Numb is a good word, a good way of describing how I feel most of the time. Though I know that God is working, I see His work, and I praise Him for all that He is doing.

Two things lay deeply on my mind, the first today is that my Niece is probably in surgery or very close to going in for her surgery as I type this. We have had a lot of good news on this front and we continue to hold on that more good news will prevail. She had her gallbladder removed and it was benign, Praise the Lord! Her genetic testing came back and she does not carry the gene for this breast cancer, Praise the Lord. Now we sit and wait to see what the surgeon finds when he goes in to remove the lump, we pray he is able to remove the lump without having to remove the breast.

My dear friend DeAnn, however, has probably taken up most of my time and emotions. She had a recurrence of Hodgkin’s Disease after 18 years. After two rounds of her chemo, she was admitted to the hospital with a fever of 104+. By Sunday she was placed in ICU on a respirator. The chemo has damaged her heart, lungs and kidneys. Unless her heart strengthens she will not be able to come off the respirator, and they will not be able to do the kidney dialysis that her body so desperately needs. The flip side to this is that if her heart does strengthen, will it withstand the dialysis, as well as the rest of the treatment needed for the Hodgkin’s.

I thought the following was such a wonderful testimony as to how God is using this situation with DeAnn, to show His compassion and faithfulness to all of us concerned with DeAnn.

I thought I would try to compile some of the amazing things I've seen over the past few days:
An explosion on Facebook of literally hundreds of people responding to the posts, and posting them as their own status, reaching hundreds more.
Many people saying that they are unable to sleep or are waking up in the middle of the night with DeAnn on their mind, and they pray. Some have even said they dream of DeAnn. Some prayer warriors saying they have never prayed so hard in their life for someone.
An ICU nurse who says she doesn't have trouble sleeping at night with all the patients she sees in such critical condition, couldn't get DeAnn off her mind.
A hastily assembled payer vigil for 7pm Tuesday night at the hospital has to be moved to the chapel because approx 25 family and friends show up for the prayer. At the same time, many individuals unable to be present are also praying at 7pm, including a Bible study of over 100 women. One woman who says that every night since then, she has been praying at 7pm for DeAnn.
Pastoral staff at a local church following Facebook all day looking for updates, and stopping work to pray specifically for her.
Ian being awarded Clubber of the Month at AWANA, something he has only done two other times in 7 years, for a twenty minute testimony he gave in front of 45 clubbers several weeks ago (those that know Ian are not surprised it was 20 minutes, I am shocked it was not more :) ).
An unknown individual donating airline miles so her brother can fly out from Kansas, and a fund started to help with expenses.
A snowstorm right before chemo was to start, "stranded" DeAnn, Ian and I together at my parents house for three days, which is a wonderful memory of a happy time we were able to spend together before all this began.
A professional photographer who created an extra "grand prize" just for DeAnn of a free 11x14 and video session, which resulted in not only a wonderful family portrait, but a video that that to me, is more precious than the photo and brings tears to my eyes each time I watch it. DeAnn has seen the photo, I pray that she will be able to see the video. (written by her husband)

As I continue my break from blogging during this difficult time, I just ask for prayers for both of these situations. I will try to update as I can muster the energy and thoughts to do so.