HOME in several ways.
YES, home //
This is my dad, tonight, in his HOME. He stood up for the first time in 52 hours. His body accepts needed medications. His oxygen saturation is within the normal range.
I’m hugging a miracle here. The miracle ate dinner and worked on insurance issues and laughed and cried and prayed tonight. We’re so overwhelmed and exhausted that we’d probably cry at anything, but this is worth weeping over. 52 hours of YOUR prayers later, this is what we have: a second chance at life, a confirmation that God’s not done, a renewed promise for hope and a future.
NO, not home //
My dad is home because there is nothing more the doctors can do. I mean this, however, in its most hopeful sense. Since Monday, the doctors discovered multiple blood clots, administered blood thinner and heart medication, and monitored my dad’s body’s response. Today they sent him home on medication indefinitely, trusting that the drugs will do their job. Clots, bleeding, and scarring are still present, but he now has the tools to treat them. I hate seeing my dad wince in pain, hearing his piercing cough, and knowing he is still coughing up blood until the clots shrink enough to leave his lungs alone. The prayer requests remain the same:
•that the blood thinner continues to work (to dissolve the clots that are causing the lungs to bleed)
•that the heart medication continues to work (lessening atrial fibrillation)
•that God brings full healing. Instantaneous would be nice; slowly and surely is fine. Any is divine.
We are gratefully, utterly tired. My parents went to bed hours ago. I found out at the end of the night that I had an article of clothing on backward. My mom and I misplaced things right in front of our faces multiple times (hold the jokes about how I do this anyway).
I can’t shake Isaiah 41 from my mind tonight: most of the chapter (vv. 8-20) is a list of impossible, unlikely things God does to prove His love for His people, especially ones who are in need. It’s full of earthy metaphors—planting junipers in a wasteland, turning parched ground into springs—and three times God says, “Do not fear.” Three times God also says, “I will help you.” Why? “So that people may see and know, may consider and understand, that the hand of the Lord has done this” (41:20, NIV).
I think there’s another set of hands in this photo we can’t see: God’s hands over us. It’s a three-Person hug for sure.
To a future YOU have prayed into existence,
Renée