Just beyond the sunrise

So many people have been praying so hard for Josh, so many expectations have been placed on today's ECHO, so many hopes rested on today's test results that I have a heavy heart when I sit down to update you all.

The ECHO did not go as planned, the right side of Joshua's heart is further enlarged and surgery inevitable. There is no way to 'fix' the Tricuspid valve, the only option left to us is another surgery. There is a part of me that aches from the blow and there is a part that is frustrated because I thought this time, this time with all the prayers that went up on behalf of Joshua surely a miracle was in the works; maybe it still is, maybe the way to the miracle is with this surgery. I don't know. I find myself feeling a fraction of what Job must have felt like. I want to understand the why, I want to know the reasons and understand why the answer this time was no. I find myself yet again struggling with the knowledge that hope in this case is over, the decision has been made. There is no going back, we have surgery on the horizon and be it in 6 months of even a year it is still there, looming just over the sunrise.

I hear myself explaining this again and I struggle with this feeling of being a burden, of always asking for prayer, always having to say that things aren't going well. I was so hoping that this time I could write and say that we had good news. I so wanted to tell you about this amazing thing that happened, and all I can say is that here we go again. I am sorry, I am so sorry that I can't write that to you today.

I want to leave this on an upbeat note, and though I am struggling to find one, I can leave you with this; God knows the beginning from the end, he has Josh safe in his arms and he loves us, there is a plan though we can't possibly see it. We prayed for a miracle and we may still get it, though how it comes to us may not be what we had expected or planned but in the end he knows best. As a family, we just have to cling to that, like the woman who reached out to touch the robe of Jesus in faith of healing, it will come, in this life or the next.