There’s not much more to update so I hope you have a great day! Thanks for praying for our family!
We’ve got a nice little pace going to life now. The weeks have looked a little similar for about a month and that gives me time to evaluate daytime routines for house and kids and priorities within them and figure out what goes where. There are plenty of things going on—the college and the church are beginning to schedule activities, ministry opportunities are picking up again. It seems now that we’ve had a good taste of family time (COVID lockdown), that it’s so important to balance the busyness with time for each other. We’re obviously excited for warmer weather. Joy is doing great! Ethan is doing great! (almost done with 1st grade 😊) Ben and I are doing great! Maybe that’s a lot of great but we’ll take it for now.
There’s not much more to update so I hope you have a great day! Thanks for praying for our family! I began the process of writing a blog post during the last infusion, only to realize my former post had already covered all of March and nothing had really changed.
Thankfully, nothing has really changed even now. We are swimming along nicely in the new routine of spring and school and services. Joyanna has continued in school, three days a week. She is doing well in all areas of her school days. She is maintaining well in her gait trainer with no fainting, enough to lengthen the time she spends in it. We are hoping that now it helps her to gain strength and stamina. She is now going back to church at all services except the Wednesday evening service on her infusion days which has been our routine throughout her infusions. Her infusion was approved by insurance through September. She is still doing occupational therapy twice a month through TCC. Ben has planted half of the garden (plants) and is waiting until a little warmer soil temperature to plant seeds. This year he added some nutrients back into the soil to balance its acidity and ph. We hope this means a good growing year. We plan to stick close to home this summer since we have done more traveling in the last couple of years. This will allow us to capitalize on major garden-producing months. The end of this month will bring quite the milestone for our girl. She will be 9 years old on April 30! Philip went to heaven just 3 months shy of his ninth birthday so we are very thankful to still have Joy with all her smiles and feistiness at her ninth. I know their plans designed by God are so different, but it is still the only frame of reference we have to compare one journey to the other. We know that for Philip to live longer or for Joy to live shorter would all be decided by our sovereign Lord and there would be grace for either but we can be thankful that God has given us a little more time here on earth with Joyanna. It really is amazing to think of the different journeys with the same disease. Four months before Philip went to heaven, given the state of Philip’s brain and body, I began to consistently pray that God would allow him to go to heaven and be free from that dysfunctional outer shell. Within the last year, God has tried my faith to see if I am still willing to release Joyanna to Him and His plans, and He worked that surrender within me, but it is hard to imagine praying to plead with God to take her to Him. We still enjoy making her laugh and keeping all her favorite things available to fill her days with joy. For those who don't know Joy as well, Nemo and Dory ("Just keep swimming") is one of those favorites, along with Sunday school songs of all kinds, Patch the Pirate stories, Curious George and Maurice Sendak's Little Bear. She is truly a blessing to us all! I have the opportunity to speak two more times this spring to ladies and just share what God has done for my family and in my heart. These opportunities help me to look back and to survey the working of the Lord. Then I want to say like the Psalmist, “This is the LORD'S doing; it is marvellous in our eyes.” Psalm 118:23 What a mighty God we serve! How Big is God? [Verse 1] Though men may strive to go beyond the reach of space, To crawl beyond the distant shimmering stars, This world's a room so small within my Master's house, The open sky but a portion of His yard. [Chorus] How big is God? How big and wide His vast domain? To try to tell, these lips can only start. He's big enough to rule His mighty universe, Yet small enough to live within my heart. [Verse 2] As winter’s chill may cause the tiny seed to fall, To lie asleep 'til waked by summer's rain, The heart grown cold will warm and throb with life anew, The Master's touch will bring the glow again. |
Philip & Joyanna's Story
December 17, 2009 -
August 25, 2018 Philip's memorial slideshow and funeral service can be viewed by clicking on the "Philip" tab at the top of this page. You can read more about Joyanna's story by clicking on the "Joyanna" tab at the top of this page.
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March 2024
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