Ephesians 3:20

A little more than a week after Cali's appointment with Dr. Didelot, we are marching to the beat of a different drum. It's amazing what the unknown does to you. Now we know what is ahead and we are ready to face it...fearlessly!

We walked into our appointment last Thursday, not knowing what we were going to hear. Would it be surgery? Would it be a brace? Would it be that they couldn't do anything? Would it get worse? Could it get better? All these questions swirled in our minds...

Dr. Didelot was very nice and explained everything to us. He told us that he was going to put her in a brace in which she would sleep at this point. He didn't want to do surgery because she has a wedged shaped vertebrate which she has probably had since birth and since they fuse the spine, that wedged vertebrate complicates things for surgery. It would limit her mobility for sure. She would lose the motion that she needs to twist for pitching and she wouldn't be able to dive into a pool or tumble and twist like a normal kid where as with the curve she has now which is 40 degrees, she can do everything. There are no limits or restrictions. He said she could even bear children with this curve. Cali thought that was a little strange of him to say but I assured her that he meant when she was older and married:) He didn't say that surgery was not out of the question; just not the best option for her. So the hope is that this brace, which she has to wear for 2+ years (because that's how much growth he estimated she still had) will stop the curve from getting worse. So we had her measured for her brace. She should get it this week. It is a hard, plastic case. She'll have a hard time getting used to it but she will. Nothing a little Simply Sleep can't cure:)

He said it probably won't get better but in rare cases, he has seen them improve.

Perfect timing...

This year our church is doing the Year of Prayer and we have been challenged to ask God to do things that "probably won't happen", things that seem impossible, miracles...

K-Love, the radio station I listen to all the time also challenged us to pick one word to describe what we are praying for this year. My word is HEALING. This word encompasses so much.

My prayer for the impossible is that Cali's back is healed, straightened, fixed, cured. My prayer for healing covers so many others: my dad and his neck/back/leg/feet issues, Brian's high blood pressure/high cholesterol, Cameron's heart murmur, Marlene's heart and diverticulitis, the spiritual healing of friends and family, continued healing of relationships.

Yesterday I took Christen to the doctor. She has strep throat or as she calls it, "shrek throat". She asked if God would take it away. I told her that there was a picture of Jesus in Dr. Mathison's office watching over a surgery. I told her that He was the Master Healer. She made sure that I showed her that picture.

I thought of Jeremy Camp's song, Jesus Saves where it says:
You save, you heal, restore, reveal
Your Father's heart to us

I have been so amazed though this whole Cali thing...from the time we noticed the curve, the very second...how God revealed himself to me. Like not for one second did I have to ask why did this happen...because I knew. I hated it. I still do, but I knew.

I don't know what God's purpose is for Cali or for anyone else but I knew that I had drifted off...dangerously far off. I thought that as long as I was joining in the family prayer at night, me and God were good. Do I think God is punishing me? Absolutely NOT! Do I feel like he was saying, "I want what we used to have back"? YES!!!

Call it what you will, but I'm not kidding...sitting in the recliner in the condo in Florida the day after we noticed Cali's back and I just picked up my devotional Bible and read and felt so peaceful and so comforted. It was then that I just prayed for healing for Cali and for my dad and it was there that the idea came into my head to send Dr. Mathison an email and how I remembered seeing that I could do that from a poster in his office had to be a "God thing". But from that email came a phone call from Dr. Mathison and then a Dr. appointment with Dr. Gorup for my dad who seems to be on the right path of getting him fixed. So all the praise goes to God! Amazing!

Our church has also been challenged to stay in God's word. I failed miserably last year when it came to reading through the entire Bible. I just couldn't get through the Old Testament but this year we have the option of reading through the New Testament in a year. This is definitely something I can do. So far, I haven't missed and what is awesome is much of Matthew is about Jesus HEALING...How cool is that?

Anyway, there's a lot of rambling and randomness in this post but you get the picture. God has been amazing in the way he has drawn us back in and I can tell you that prayers are being answered and I believe that He can accomplish infinitely more than we might ask or think. Eph 3:20