The Night Watches

"In the day you entered into a covenant with God, and he with you, you entered into the most impregnable rock and fortress, and covered yourself in a castle of defence, where you may (modestly) defy all adverse powers of earth or hell. If God cannot save you, he is not God. And if he will not save you, he must break his covenant. Indeed, he may resolve to save you, not from affliction and persecution, but in it, and by it!" - Richard Baxter, from Voices from the Past So excited to get this book. A dear friend told me about it, and I just ordered it. I actually ordered a few books and I am so excited to get them. Isn't that so fun, being so excited to read new books. I just finished Unbroken, and that was one of the best books I have read in a while. Reading is such a gift, I am so grateful for the many truth-filled books available to consume. We are busy living life, enjoying summer, busy with family and friends, trips to the pool, cook-outs, keeping the house toge...

All this rain, makes me long for those sunny blue skies we had just this past weekend! I know the rains will make for greener grass, but boy do I miss playing outside. The boys, however, are really enjoying making mud pies. I don't have much to report on. Life has been returning to "normal" since we got home from the hospital. Jack is feeling good and he has definitely fully recovered from his suffering he endured just one month ago. The kids are learning to play and share, to differ to one another. We are staying home a lot, helping them to learn to obey and trying to avoid spending money unnecessarily (which happens whenever I go near Target)! We have really just been hunkering down at home, enjoying each other, and getting some routine in place, chores established and order. I took out one of my favorite lenses for my camera and rediscovered why I liked it so much. I spent the afternoon the other day taking pictures of my yard and our fig tree, my kids, and the messes...

"All these people were still living by faith wen they died." Hebrews 11:13 "By faith they lived-- it was their comfort, their guide, their motive and their support; and in the same spiritual grace, they died, ending their life-song in the sweet strain which they had so long continued. They didn't die resting in the flesh or upon their own attainments; they made no advance from their first way of acceptance with God, but held to the way of faith to the end. Faith as precious to die by as to live by." ~Charles Spurgeon, Morning and Evening May 2 I read this today and it filled me with hope to live my life well. To live each day not consumed with what I must accomplish, or where I need to go, how I am failing or even how wonderful my successes are; but full of faith that my standing before God has not changed and will not change. It can be well with my soul all my days. I pray this is how I live my life. Not that I am thinking of death over much, but more on...

Seven years ago, I became Jordan's wife. In that seven years, we have had 3 children, moved 7 times, 1 major job change, 1 cancer diagnosis, and traveled to 5 countries. Man, a lot has happened over the course of our marriage. To think that we have been friends for 9 years and together of 8 years and married for 7... well it is amazing. Where has the time gone? I certainly do not want to boast in any success story of us. By no means are we just lucky in love either. We have had fights, conflicts, we have had trials and difficulty, just like everyone else. Not every day in our lives together has been perfectly peaceful and without hardship. Yet, throughout the entirety of our marriage, a consistent thread has been woven, a faithful truth has sustained. God has been near to us, he has sustained us, and he gives us hope. Ours is not a success story or marital success. Ours is a story of two people who have been rescued by a great savior, rescued by grace over and over again. And it i...

Friday we woke up with the expectation to be staying at Children's Hospital for a couple more days, with Jack's counts crawling there way up to two hundred. I was packing my bag to spend the night at the hospital, only to get a text from Jordan that his ANC went from 90 the previous day to 230! We were likely going to be coming home that afternoon! AMAZING. Simply put, God is amazing. I could not get to the hospital fast enough. Such happy news. And truly shocking. We had taken him off of the morphine the previous day, and he did really well with that. The doctors finally figured out what virus he had, Roseola . He had pretty much a textbook case. Fever for 5 days, then he broke out into a head to toe rash. We thought the rash might have been a reaction to the blood transfusion he got, but it stayed until a day ago, and a reaction to blood would have looked a lot different. So, we came home Friday afternoon. My mom, who had been watching Tyler and Dylan kept them one extra day...

Another day here at Children's Hospital, sitting in our room, while my baby sleeps. He was up most of the night, having trouble sleeping, mostly due to the fact that I was not sleeping next to him in his bed. I tried to get him to let me sleep on the couch, but he would not have it. He also was having a tummy ache most of the night. Somewhere between the alarms beeping when his meds were finished and him crying because i wasnt next to him, i caved and snuggled up for the remainder of the night. I think that was at 3:30... So now he is sleeping away. This morning, his counts took a little dip. I had been expecting them to go up maybe a little, not holding out for them to go too high, but instead they went down a little. The Dr. Isn't concerned. Kids like Jack can have a little bit of a mini roller coaster ride with their counts going up and down. We are hoping that the upward swing continues tomorrow and through the weekend, and we will be able to leave by Saturday or Sunday....

Just got his counts for today. I was expecting them to hit rock bottom. Zero. But happy news for today, his ANC went all the way up to 100!! Praise God! He had a blood transfusion yesterday, and then slept the rest of the day away. We are trying to space out his Morphine dose a little bit today, to see how he is really feeling and to see if less helps with the constipation. But if he is in any pain again, we can up the dose again. We are spacing it from every 2 hours, to last night it was every 3, and today we are going to try for every 4 hours. We will see how he is doing with that for now. I did get a smile or two out of him yesterday, which was the sweetest moments of the day. I hope today is a much better day. I am staying with him today and sleeping there tonight, so I will not be able to update much till tomorrow. We still have a long way to go to complete recovery, BUT we are finally headed in the right direction. Keep praying for our little guy. His mouth sores still look pret...