16 months in…

 Thank you all for your fervent prayers for Jon. God is continuing to answer your requests and I’m happy to report his CEA today is 4.6, a point down from last month and indicative of continued success with this treatment regime!

He will receive his infusion over the next couple of hours, and then he will be set for the next month until his scan at the end of April (no date yet). The scan will give us more info in choosing the next step, which we pray will just be more of the current treatment as he has handled it so incredibly well. 

He has had NO treatment-related fatigue, nausea, weight loss, pain, depression, colostomy complications, diet restrictions, or difficulty concentrating (important for an engineer). While the cyclical rash you see does flare angrily shortly after treatment, it doesn’t bother him much and is gone in a couple weeks. His health compared to a year ago is nearly unbelievable, except that God is his Great Physician. He alone chooses to bless means or withhold that blessing for better purposes. Our trust and praise are fixed on our Heavenly Father. 

We leave for our cross-country trip this Friday! Stops will include the Grand Canyon, San Diego to visit my sister and her family, and Zion National Park and Bryce Canyon in Utah.  We will drive I-70 across Colorado on our way home, Lord willing. The excitement is building everyday!

Everything in our life is so, so perfect. Not one area is untouched by God’s obvious care and loving kindness to us personally. I was struck deeply during church services yesterday how layered we are in God’s goodness. The peace and joy in our family is at an all-time high; Jon’s job is enjoyable and profitable for our family; he and I are happier together than we have ever been; the community surrounding us in family and church are exactly what we need. Incredible. 

For the younger ones reading this, let me assure you that when your own large trials come…when you get the worst news of your life…when everything seems to be spinning out of control…when you’ve experienced a big disappointment, God is in absolute control and can change your circumstances quicker than you can imagine. Or He can give you grace and strength to walk through them, teaching you and refining you by them, and give you so many mercies along the way that it will blow your mind when you’re watching for them. Build your faith now by exercising yourself strong in smaller difficulties so that you know the path to complete confidence in God when the bigger stuff comes. As it’s been preached recently, trials are not bad things but rather opportunities crafted by our Creator for our perfection when we respond to them rightly. 

Are there still dark clouds on our horizon? Of course. Everything can change tomorrow, and God will still be good and right and holy. We still wouldn’t deserve all the blessings of today, of the last year, or of the entirety of our lives. And no matter the severity of the storm ahead, our hearts can rest in knowing He will be there, our all-sufficient Help in time of trouble, besetting us behind and before and laying His hand upon us (Psalm 139). 

So we continue to pray in the words of one of our favorite modern artists,

“Give us faith to be strong, 

Give us strength to be faithful”