Miraculous Happenings & Home

In the briefest terms… Ashlyn was scheduled last week for a unique surgery today in an attempt to help a collapsed portion of her very damaged lung do something they didn’t believe it could do on it’s own.  This surgery was to have been a difficult one…but worth attempting rather than the final option of a partial lung removal.   The team of doctors wanted a week to prepare for the surgery (so they could talk to other doctors who had done similar surgeries on adults (none on children). 

That week of preparation proved to be a wonderful thing for Ashlyn because during this past week her lung has made some small but very significant progress …  it appears to be slowly healing itself.  While her lung may take months to fully heal… that it is healing at all was enough for the doctors to cancel today’s scheduled surgery.  They just gave us this news this last night… and we were so relieved because that could have easily been another month in ICU.  

They then began talking about the possibility of allowing her to come home (maybe within a weeks time) with a special valve attached to the remaining tube that still feeds into her chest cavity.  The lead doctor hasn’t sent anyone home in this manner in 15 years…and never a child.  Yet he thought the circumstance could warrant it.  

Then just an hour ago the doctors said we can go home!  Because there is nothing more they can do there.  So we have in less than 24 hours gone from a scheduled surgery, today…to coming home, today!

 What I really wish I could describe to each of you reading this is what it feels like to be the recipient of hundreds and thousands of daily prayers of people (most of whom you have never even met) combined with those whom you have.  It is a most wonderful and joyful experience. 

  On the one hand you wish your child wasn’t sick, you wish you weren’t sleeping and living in ICU…. and that you weren’t in the midst of the tubes, doctors and moments of absolute surreal-ness asking, are we really doing this?  And on the other hand there are extended undeniable moments of sheer joy, there have been measurable and immeasurable miracles each day and there is a sense of peace that surpasses understanding and provides a sense of comfort and confidence that would seem inconsistent with the circumstance…. but instead are actually present because of, and the most welcome companions to the circumstance.

 Probably more than you wanted to know… but less than friends like you deserve.

It is my belief that we are all, each one of us, participants in and contributors to miracles each and every day.   But because of the scales over the eyes of our understanding and because of the distractions and busyness of life we most often miss seeing the miracles.  Yet on rare occasions there are some miracles that are as undeniable as was Moses parting of the Red Sea….so the children of Israel could go home.  This is one of those miracles…and each of you have been participants and contributors.

… from a scheduled visit to an operating room to the warmth of a family living room…. in less than 24 hours.  

Even as I am writing this… our Ashlyn is being discharged from Egleston Children’s Hospital…and will soon be home.

Thank you for your prayers and thank God for the healing Grace of his Son… and the multitude of His tender mercies.

More later

Kirk

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