Thursday, June 19, 2014

TUESDAY´S LIGHT



After pouring out our hearts for so long for a breakthrough in all of Jenna´s nutritional issues in her journey to wellness, something cracked on Tuesday, June 17th.  For the first time in a while, we all went to bed content, joyful & grateful.  It had been a long time since there had been a day with good news...I literally have just been savoring it, pondering what God is doing and almost unable to speak or  write about it!  It was a precious day.

Many of you read my heartfelt lament on Sunday.  That psalm of personal lament captured many of our feelings in the last months - our doubts, our theological struggles, our deep desire to believe & be close to Him in spite of it all.  So many of you have cried out with us.

On Monday I saw the following brief devotional thought on fb from our former pastor in Buenos Aires:

¨Let God say Let there be Light¨























                                                                            
      It just simply said this:  
                                                                       
¨God made heaven and earth with His power, there is nothing too difficult for Him.
  If today everything is dark in your life, let Him say: Let there be Light.¨   
- Carlos Mraida

Since I have been praying for Light and Discernment for the doctors, it caught my attention.  I meditated all day on the power of God to just speak out and illuminate the entire universe.  I began to pray HIS LIGHT and the power of His WORD to bring about change, to bring LIGHT to Jenna´s situation.  We were desperate to penetrate the darkness of our situation, to bring His brightness, His presence, His glory into our circumstances.  A couple of friends came to the hospital that morning and as Jenna was getting an endoscopy, we prayed for these things together.

The next day, before I got to the hospital, I was in a store doing an errand.  As is typical, the radio was on in the background and I wasn´t paying much attention, but all of a sudden, at the end of a song, with music behind it, a deep voice said (in English): ¨And God said, ´Let there be Light.´¨ I did a double take! But before I could blame my imagination, it was repeated again:  ¨And God said, ´Let there be Light.´¨  That´s how the song ended.  Now I have no idea what that song was, the artist, if it was all in English or only the speaking voice...I don´t even know if I was the only one who heard it or if everyone did... but this was the secular radio!  In Spain!  It was really random and also quite cool.

Later at the hospital, I told Jenna about it and she said, ¨Well, if something great happens today, that is gonna be a really cool story!¨ And by the end of the day, something great really did happen...

By the time I left the hospital around 7 to go home and take Jordan to futbol, things were still the same and we were even disappointed because the endoscopy showed no further clues about why she´s vomiting.  We had run out of tests to do.  But when I got home, Jenna called and said, they had had a medical team meeting (her team being comprised of GI surgeons, Endocrinologist/Nutritionist and Oncologists) and that they had decided to do a Jejunostomy on her the next day!  I was stunned.  We had asked for this months ago and they said she was not a candidate for that because of the chemo damage in her abdomen.  They were leaning toward parenteral nutrition at home to keep her nourished but it holds more risks because it goes through the bloodstream and they can´t do chemo at the same time because of how it lowers your immune system.  We were thrilled with this news and since it came on the heels of all the thoughts, prayers and even radio messages about Light, we are taking it as the breakthrough we have been waiting for!

As if that weren´t enough, when I got home Dani told about her exciting 2 leads on a summer job.  (You need to know the unemployment rate for the 18-25 year-old bracket here is over 50%!)  So this is miraculous to us.  Also, after struggling in math this last trimester and doing really poorly on his last exam, Jordan absolutely aced the make-up exam that day.  That was a real victory for him!  So all three kids had some very special things done for them by the God of Light on Tuesday.  :)

The next day Jenna´s surgery went fine.  The really cool thing, however, was that the surgeons said that when they opened her up, her intestines were COMPLETELY NORMAL AS IF SHE HAD NEVER HAD AN OPERATION!  When I told Jenna that later, she started crying and said, ¨Mom, that´s just what I prayed for!  That my intestines would be made new!¨  So healing is happening.  Her intestines may not be functioning normally yet but they are apparently on their way!

We pray this will usher in a new season...for Jenna to get nutrition without throwing it up, that her esophagus and the place that seems to give the gagging reflex will get a chance to heal and that she will soon be able to eat by mouth again.  That would be a major victory.

We pray that as she has a way to get consistent nutrition that the chemo can be reinstituted. It´s now been more than 4 months since the surgery and there are some nodules visible to the eye (they noticed that yesterday during surgery).  It´s imperative to have a working system for nutrition for her and simultaneously be doing chemo to kill any remaining cancer cells.

We feel like we´re heading forward again, that something broke in the heavenlies on our behalf and that change is on the horizon.

Let God say, ¨Let there be Light!¨




Photo by:  Anissa

6 comments:

  1. "Mas o caminho dos justos é como a luz da aurora… que vai brilhando mais e mais até ser dia perfeito." That's it! May His encouragement continue to come your way. Please hug the kids for us. They are very special to our hearts as their parents are! Blessings.

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    1. Yes! May that Light grow brighter and brighter until the Fulness of day...

      love you guys!

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  2. WOW. Such a stunning testimony of God's steadfast faithfulness. Words can't even contain His goodness. Praise the Lord! Rejoicing with you and praying for more! "I waited patiently for the Lord; He turned to me and heard my cry." - Psalm 40:1

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  3. Thanks for rejoicing with us, Erin! Your company on this journey means so much.

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  4. we rejoice with you guys and pray that this j tube will help her to get stronger and handle the chemo well, so that it can go and get those "bad guys" !!! :-) We are so excited!

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  5. Bless the Lord, O my soul! Thank you God for this great news!!! I'm so excited to read this and hear how prayers are being answered. He is good! Thanks for your consistent updates Pam!

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