I'm really requesting prayer for my neighbor and really good friend. She just found out that her father has stage 4 lung cancer.
She lives across the street from me and her parents are in Louisiana where she's originally from. Right now she's making arrangements to fly down to see her father. She's also pregnant (due around Thanksgiving) so this time is extremely stressful for her, finding out about her father and traveling alone so late in her pregnancy.
I've talked to her and she knows I'll be praying and I'm going to be recruiting others to pray for her.
Dear Lord,
I want to pause right now and pray for Stefanie. Lord I'm asking for you to grant her peace during this time. Lord I know the fear that grips you when you find out someone you love dearly has cancer.
Lord right now she's in that stage where there's a diagnosis, but not many answers around that diagnosis. They're still waiting to find out the next steps and at times that can be the most stressful part.
Lord I thank you for Stefanie. You truly couldn't have given me a better neighbor or friend. Lord her and her family have been by our side.
Lord please, I pray that her father gets through this. Lord I pray for the right words to say to be able to comfort her during this difficult time. Please protect her and her child as she travels.
Lord please be with this family. She needs your comfort.
For some reason this year I'm getting asked quite a bit on my stance on Halloween. How much do we avoid and what do we allow our children to do. Can they go to Halloween parties? Can they look at decorations? Will I buy them costumes? Will they watch any Halloween cartoons? Will they be going trick or treating this year?
Here's my take on Halloween. I don't cover my children's eyes when walking past decorations. I do try to avoid the really dark scary ones...though thanks to some of my neighbors decorations that's somewhat impossible. But no one has had any nightmares so that's good.
Nathan can only participate in select activities because of his cancer, so no we won't be going to any parties etc.
But do I celebrate Halloween? Seriously I've been asked this question quite a bit for some reason over the last two weeks. It seems to be a topic that divides Christians. We all know, or hopefully we know what the holiday really means. So no I do not celebrate it. But I do stand in my door and hand out candy.
Truthfully you'll never hear me getting into huge debates with people if they decided to let their children go trick or treating or not. I think there are bigger things out there to debate then whether I should let my child watch "The Great Pumpkin"
I feel as Christians that's the main day we should have our doors open. What other day do you have dozens of strangers knocking on your door? What a wonderful oppurtunity to witness!!! And the best part is they're coming willingly to you. I believe in giving out bags of candy with tracts in them. I highly recommend the children's tract "Best Friend". Last year Sam and I ordered 100 tracts and prepared 100 bags of candy and gave out ALL of them within the FIRST HOUR. And we only gave out 1 bag per person. That's how many people were coming to our home. I hated we hadn't ordered more.
Matthew 28:19 commands us saying "19Therefore go and make disciples of all nations, baptizing them in the name of the Father and of the Son and of the Holy Spirit."
We don't know who's coming to our homes. I just went to get glasses from JcPenny's yesterday and as I'm sitting in front of this sales lady it dawned on me, She has no idea I'm the mother of a child with cancer and I have no idea what she can be facing in her life right now. We don't know but God knows.
In this day and age we're hearing of children being bullied, committing suicide, cutting themselves, cursing, dressing seductively...sadly I could go on and on. They need to know about Christ.
I'm telling you the only reason I'm still standing in my situation is because I have hope and my hope rests not in my situation but in Christ alone. Everything about Nathan's situation is uncertain, it looks really good right now but it's still uncertain. But Christ is certain. Please let them know that God told us "that in this world there will be trouble, but that He has overcome this world." They need to know this and we have to tell them.
So open your doors! Give out candy with tracts! Set up a table and hand out Bibles! Be there in case a child needs to pray! Show them how they too can be saved! Pray for God to send someone to you! Pray for Him to give you the right words to say! Because really what good do you do anyone by closing your doors under the guise "we don't celebrate it"?
As you already know things change quickly around here.
Nathan has been pretty cranky all day today and really achy. I gave him pain meds this morning and that seemed to help a little.
About an hour ago I put him down for a nap. I then heard him explode with tears about 10 minutes later out of the blue. (that's really out of character for him) I raced back uptairs to see he'd thrown up a TON.
He's not running a fever and after I got him cleaned up and gave him some medicine to calm his stomach, he really just wanted to lay back down. He's asleep now.
I already put in a call to his nurse who's going to talk to the doctor and call me back soon.
He gets chemo tomorrow so he'll see the docs then. Unless he gets worse or spikes a fever I doubt he'll have to go to the ER. I'm just praying he wakes up feeling a little better.
No seriously I have been thanking God out loud all morning. My daughter is getting a kick out of hearing me and seeing me raising my hands and praising our wonderful Saviour!
We got a call this morning that Nathan's tumor has again shrunk significantly since the test last month and that the intensity is measuring low. I won't have the exact numbers until we actually go in and sit and talk with the Oncologist this Thursday and I'm so excited to hear them and look at the comparisons on paper.
But for right now we praise Him! God has been so good and gracious and I'm so thankful to Him for this wonderful report!
Nathan's scans were cancelled today because one of the machines were down. It would've took too long to get it back up and running so his tests have been rescheduled for this coming Friday instead.
Nathan didn't get the best results back on his last scans, they ended up being considered inconclusive. I didn't share them on the blog because they were pretty confusing.
Anyway they're redoing them tomorrow (well today, it's after midnight here). I'm just asking for prayer for Nathan.
Sam and I have put the entire situation in God's hands once again and for now we're at peace. I've been praying for a total healing for Nathan and I know a lot of you have been too. It's in God's hands.
Dear Lord,
I'm trusting you with Nathan. I know the scans are tomorrow and I'm placing him in your hands once again. I pray over the doctors and nurses involved. I pray that everyone has gotten the proper sleep and have a clear head so they can do their jobs properly.
I pray over Nathan who has to be sedated. I pray that you be with him as he goes to sleep and wake him up gently as you've done every time before. I pray for him when he's alone with the doctors and technicians. He'll be out of my sight but always in yours. Please protect him Father.
Lord I know what you're capable of and you know what I've been praying for all along.
If Sam and I get anxious again over the next week or worried I pray that you remind us again who you are, what you've already done and that you're in control. Lord every time my mind wanders I want to be reminded about who I serve.
Thank you for your word Lord.
Bring comfort to Nathan. I'm still not sure how much he understands or what he thinks about but you know his every thought. Fill him with peace. Guard his thoughts and heal his precious body.
So I get asked a lot what Sam and I have been up to outside of cancer our hobbies etc. You want to know things we find time to do that are interesting to us. We cry at times but not all the time :-) We still have our interest and I'll share one of mine.
Sam and I both decided on homeschooling for our children so I've been taking time to learn as much as I can about it. When I used to work at the YWCA years ago, we used to get a lot of homeschoolers enrolled in our classes. Truthfully I knew these kids pretty well through coaching but never really paid attention to what homeschooling was about. Also when I was working I had a manager who homeschooled all 5 of his children, again at the time I didn't pay too much attention.
Since Nathan was born it has been something we'd been interested in off and on and I'm no longer in touch with the families from my YWCA days or my old manager but I really wanted more information on it. I found out one of my cousins pulled her 3 girls from school and had been homeschooling for a year and I contacted her and she couldn't say enough good things about it.
So I went to a homeschool conference not too long ago. I'd venture to say there were over 5000 people at the conference. It was a two day conference and had tons of workshops. The nice part about it was most of the parents came with their children and I got really bold and would just walk up to people and introduce myself and tell them my how young my children were and how I was planning on homeschooling and I'd conduct a mini interview with them on the spot.
Everyone I stopped was more than willing to talk to me and I got so many people's contact information. I talked to people who were just starting out along with people who had graduated some children etc. I was delighted to talk to quite a few teenagers and get their perspectives. It was a wonderful experience. There's so many myths about homeschooling that just aren't true at all and it's amazing when you start to research something how much you can learn about it and how so many things you thought can end up being wrong.
It was interesting to learn the pros and cons of homeschooling, what are the success rates of homeschoolers and what makes them successful, also another interesting thing to me was how many former teachers were there who are now homeschooling their children. I'd venture to say over half of the people there used to be school teachers (I'm saying this because during one of the keynote speeches they asked the former school teachers to stand and over half the crowd stood.) Another thing that intrigued me was that the speaker noted that statistically it's usually harder for someone who is an ex school teacher to homeschool than it is for a parent who hasn't taught.
It was interesting because a huge myth is if you haven't been a teacher than how can you homeschool. So during my networking I asked some of my new found friends who were ex teachers why this was and if they agreed with the speaker and I didn't run into one who didn't agree (I didn't ask a TON but I asked a few). The reason is they're used to teaching a certain way to a big group of students. Home classes are smaller and at home you can tailor your lessons to the individual when at school what you teach is general to a whole class and not the individual. And homeschooling is different than schooling which is something most people who don't know anything about homeschooling don't realize (I didn't realize that either). And for those who were teachers they have to do away with most of the methods they used in the school classroom in order to teach at home.
I continue to read as many books as I can get my hands on and I continue to network with people. I've come in contact with a few more people since leaving the conference who are homeschooling (it's actually a lot more common now than people may think). Also Nathan's speech therapist is a huge homeschooling advocate, so she provides us with a ton of information that is so helpful.
Anyway I could write a week long series on what I learned about homeschooling over the last year, I'm in contact with so many people, I have links to so many blogs and a pile of books etc. it's become one of my favorite topics but I won't lol. When our children are older maybe I'll start a homeschooling blog about my experiences who knows.
Also prayer and bible reading has become a way of life for me. I said at times that some positive things do come out of a bad situation and my life has been filled with prayer lately. There's a really good sermon I'm going to post below by Pastor Cymbala of the Brooklyn Tabernacle in New York on prayer.
So many Christians don't pray enough and don't know how to pray and I learned from this experience with Nathan that sometimes God will put you in a position where you're FORCED to learn. I liken it to a sink or swim situation and this has been that for me.
It's taken me awhile to get to this point even in the midst of the journey it's taken me awhile and I'm still growing but I've grown to love talking to God all the time. Taking all of my fears to Him.
No offense to anyone who've tried but the greatest comfort from a dark situation can come only from our Savior. If you're in a dark situation there's nothing wrong with calling people but I promise you, no one will be able to comfort you like Christ. Read his word and call out to him.
A good book I recommend is Traveling Light. I read it years ago but pulled it off my bookshelf recently to read again and it's just a wonderful book.
