Selah had a good night and is resting this morning. All labs are good but her heart rate & blood pressure remain high. A UTI was cultured last night so maybe that is what is causing the latest fevers. We ask you all to continue to pray for her physically & neurologically. It is a blessing for her to be stable physically for the most part but she needs her blood pressure to go down. It remains in the 140-150 for the top number and the bottom number is running 110-120... Those numbers are much too high.
So please pray for Selah. We NEED a miracle! We need God to heal her. The doctors have given us NO hope whatsoever for any change neurologically. She is in a vegetative coma, to be blunt. If you remember the Terri Shivo case from some years ago, she is less responsive than Terri was on video. So if you can picture that, you know we need a real miracle from God. But we respect Selah and the life that is still within her! I just want you to realize as you pray that this need has NOT gone away. It is heartbreaking to see this little girl that was so full of life, just lying still....Please please pray!
As a child growing up, and as a teen, I used to think I didn't have much of a testimony. I never really went "out into the world" so I didn't have some great story of how God delivered me. Of course I can testify that God kept me from the world. Well all the hell fire and brimstone preaching is what kept me from straying too far LOL But I can testify now believe me! We have been living inside a Bubble of God's Grace these past 2 and a half weeks. This is my worst nightmare come true but the Grace and Faithfulness of God has just flooded us. Yes we cry, at times uncontrollably BUT the Grace of God is there. I've never experienced anything like this. The nearness of eternity...not necessiarly because of the fear of Selah dying, but because of the preciouness of the HOPE that no matter what happens in life, we have an eternal hope that is far beyond the pain of this life. IF God does not heal Selah, we know what kind of life we will have. We have lived in the Special Needs world for almost 9 yrs now and we realize the ramifications of what lies ahead. Is it scary? YES! But even if we have to walk through that, there is coming day when this will all just seem like a slight memory! One day Selah will be completely whole!!!
When we chose to adopt the girls, we knew they had significant disabilities and we were committing to a life long care for them as we have for Sam. We were not afraid because we were already walking that path with Sam and we knew the road to be a road filled with lots of JOY despite the difference from a "normal" life. Now unless God in His mercy heals Selah, we know some of the path ahead and it's a rockier road than what we are used to but we chose to love and to serve them for the rest of their lives. It will just be a different road.
During these days, I've surrendered this to God. I had to. My husband works two jobs and I'm the one who handles the day to day life in our home. Frankly right now, I don't' know how it is all going to work out BUT I know God is faithful and gives us what we need when we need it.
Of course I pray that God will be merciful to Selah and us. I want her back and I'm sure she wants to be back to her normal, enjoying life, following me around the house and learning new things. I pray that God will deliver her from this injury but even if He does not, we will serve God and trust His hand! We will not let our hearts grow bitter towards God. This life is but a vapor...soon we will stand before God and all our tears will be wiped away. On that day, we will say no matter what the road we walked, it was worth it all...
I want you to understand how I think theologically....In NO way do I think God caused or that He willed this accident to happen. We do not serve a sadist God. However we live in a fallen world and life happens...God knows all, He wasn't surprised by this accident but by His own attributes, He is not a genie in a bottle. The Bible doesn't promise us a perfect life and if you are sitting under a preacher that tells you that, RUN!
How many of you have seen the little "Promise Bibles"? They are filled with the promises of scripture which is GREAT! But it doesn't have some promises in there...like when Jesus said "in this world you WILL have trouble" That's a promise from Jesus that you will not hear preached very often in America where we just want the blessings of God. I want the blessings too but I realize that most of our blessings are of an eternal nature.
We are seasoned by suffering. Again I don't think God causes suffering but He will walk with us through it IF we will let Him. Don't get me wrong, I am crying out to God for her healing. I've never wanted anything more than I want this but I know God doesn't always heal. More often than not, we have to deal with the affects of sin (the fallen world- "in Adam's fall, we sinned all") Having been raised in a pentecostal home, being in the ministry for over 20 years, more often than not, I have seen good folks having to walk out their faith in trying situations. To me that is still a victory!
A few years ago, one of our beloved church members got diagnosed with pancreatic cancer. Dan was a rock for us during some hard times. We prayed and prayed for a miracle. He didn't get healed but he died with such a faith! It made an impact on my oldest son and I know that is something he will carry with him through life. Dam faced death knowing death had no victory over him! Did we want him healed? YES! But what a testimony he left behind!
So I pray in faith knowing that God can heal and deliver Selah but even if He doesn't we still have victory in Jesus knowing that this world is not our home, we are only passing through! So we cling to that sure hope! An eternal hope knowing that God causes all things to work together for the good for those who are called. It might not work the way I want it to, but it's going to be alright. It's going to alright whatever the outcome because we have a sure Anchor! No matter what life throws at us, we have an Anchor in Jesus. That means we have something to hold onto when the hard times come and rock our world. We can still stand and say we will trust God. Our family will still trust God!
Our children are watching us walk through this. They have seen all the things we have walked through and see some real miracles. Now they see us holding onto God's hand through this. When we were blessed with our new van before we left for Ukraine, on the way to pick it up, I turned to the boys and told them to remember that night and God's faithfulness even when they were old men. We were all happy and rejoicing:) but I wanted them to remember how God had supplied a need for our family. Well even in this I want the boys to think back and remember this and remember how FAITHFUL God has been to us as we have walked through this. One day they will be grown, have families and will walk through their own heartaches and I want them to turn to God when those times come.
So if you are reading this and wondering am I just putting my best foot forward on here, let me tell you I'm not like that at all. I'm pretty real (ummm to say the least) but I can tell you this peace is so real and close to me. It is amazing. Truly I have never experienced anything like it. If it wasn't real, I'd be the FIRST to tell you! Often I write about my theological struggles in various areas... sometimes I have had to put disclaimers on my blogs LOL! But this is real...it's not shock, it's not my mind trying to shut down....we are well aware of Life...we are not in denial...but we know Who is with us. Thank you for your prayers for us, for Selah... I can sit here today and say we are blessed, not from the absence of trouble but we are blessed as we walk through the fires of life. We know there is One who walks with us!
So NO MATTER what YOU ar going through, turn it over to God. Don't let your heart get bitter. TRUST HIM! Trust is hard for me. I'm one of those people who is very skeptical of others and don't trust very easily. I had enough psychology classes to diagnosis myself LOL and I realize my life experiences have made me distrustful (not to mention the career I had for many years working in the criminal justice system LOL) So trusting God did not come easy to me at all. It has been a lifelong struggle for me. maybe you can relate to that. But once I did learn to trust, I found that old song "Tis so sweet to trust in Jesus" to become so dear and true... It is sweet to trust Him.
