I Remember Everything About One Year Ago Today

April 11, 2019

My hair was long, loosely curled, my gold-rimmed sunglasses sat on top of my head. I donned a denim button-up top, paired with my favorite white skinny jeans, and the leopard print Sperry sneakers that always cut into the top of my foot, but I wear them anyways.

My mother and I spilled into the lobby carrying on our conversation and laughter after a three-hour car ride together. We took our time finding a bathroom and I even treated myself to a white mocha at the coffee shop that served Starbucks to guests just inside the hospital.

I followed my mother who had been there days before to the elevator, which opened into a large sitting area with huge floor-to-ceiling windows, we cut to the left, made a right, and walked down the hall, and into her room.

I remember everything about one year ago today.

It was a chaotic greeting. One that we didn’t expect. There were nurses and a doctor. There were beeping sounds and she was fighting. Wanting to sit up, wanting to take the oxygen mask off, wanting to see a friendly face I had hoped, and maybe even wanting to understand.

I took one sip of that coffee before it sat near the window in her hospital room and there it remained.

Our world was flipped within minutes of greeting her. Just hours before, my Mom and I discussed the steps it would take to bring my grandmother closer to home for healthcare. My mom could be closer to her, and provide frequent and constant care. We didn’t know her body was failing. We didn’t expect the doctor to so blatantly tell us her state was unfix-able. We didn’t plan for that day to turn so hopeless.

I am pretty sure the initial doctor’s words and explanation of the dire situation at hand sank into a reality for me before they did my mother. Looking back it was like slow motion watching everyone in the room swirl around me as I looked at my grandmother in her bed, and watched my mother trying to process the words from the staff.

I felt sick. There was an immediate wave of nauseousness and I was scared to touch her, fearful that my touch may cause pain or propel something terrible to happen to her body.

But then, I looked at her hands. Her beautiful, tiny, soft hands. They were the hands that rocked me as a baby. The hands that scratched my back as I laid across her lap as a child. The hands that mixed the world’s best potato salad. The hands that buckled me in the car on weekend drives. The hands that wiped my tears when I poured out my problems. The hands that squeezed mine on my wedding day.

In the scariness of the room, the beeping of unknown machines, the conversations between the nurses, the various cords that hung from machines and draped across her body, it was her hands that I reached for and squeezed.

April 11, 2018, was the last day I touched those hands, looked into her eyes, whispered ‘I love you,’ kissed her rosy cheeks, and the last time I saw her alive to say ‘goodbye.’

I knew walking out of the hospital that day I would never again see the woman who I had loved so much, who had raised me like a second mom, and who I had admired since a little girl.

And, I wanted to say ‘I love you’ again. Just once more. Even after the painful goodbye and walk away, I contemplated running back to her and doing it all again.

But the sun was shining, the sky was blue, and big white puffy clouds waved to us as we sat numb in our car before driving away.

I remember everything about one year ago today.

Some days it feels like she left us yesterday, especially when I feel the sudden urge to call her and suddenly remember she is gone. Other moments, these 365 days feel more like years that we have been a part.

I remember everything about one year ago today, and I remember everything about her.

It is hard to forget someone so special and someone who impacted your life the way she did mine.

I never imagined life without her in it. In fact, I was naive enough not to think about what it would be like with her gone.

But here I stand. 365 days since I last saw her physically on this Earth, and while the pain from remembering everything about one year ago today lives on in my heart and head, I pray to never ever forget anything about her.

There was a Hello After a Goodbye

February 5, 2019

It was just six hours from midnight, from the infamous ball drop, from a New Year’s kiss, from the start of something new. We had company at our house, but my body didn’t care. Instead, I often excused myself to nervously pace the hallway and bedroom floor, timing my contractions to four to five minutes.

We joked about a New Year’s baby and our faces plastered on the front page of our local paper. By eight o’clock, the timing entered the two to three minute arena, and after a quick call to Labor and Delivery, our guests were wishing us the best as I grabbed our hospital bag.

I was scared but also excited and the magic of, we “are going to have a baby” floated in the air.

The car ride to the hospital was quiet. I squeezed my husband’s hand and breathed through each contraction feeling a sense of Déjà vu.

It was exactly one year ago, minus one day that my husband and I made that same drive. We drove along the same highway, passed the same winding river, took the same exit, and anxiously pulled into the same ER.

One year prior, the car was just as quiet, our hands locked together in a similar manner, and I breathed heavy but this time fear was the emotion.

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Beautiful Trenches

February 1, 2019

It was a hectic morning. Top five most stressful since our son Luke was born a month ago. Not the worse ever but enough stress and madness for me to chalk it up as a top five.

The truth is, the morning started in my favor. My husband delivered a hot cup of coffee to me as I remained in bed. Luke laid in a scrunched up ball on my chest soundly sleeping, and my daughter was tucked up against me with her blanket. The three of us were lazy as the snow fell outside my bedroom window creating a beautiful winter scene.

Fifteen minutes later, my daughter was impatiently ready to hit the ground running and suddenly my sleeping son began to cry, and the crying didn’t stop.

I felt like I was teetering between two worlds. One moment motherhood felt almost romantic with euphoric highs and in a split second, I was left feeling exhausted, overwhelmed, and emotional over our current reality.

The newness of two children is still an adjustment. Trying to juggle these little beings, our home, my marriage, and my well-being leaves me even more exhausted than the current weeks of sleep deprivation.

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This Is What Happened When God Gave Me You

November 13, 2018

When God gave me you I understood the true power of change.
For nine months my body grew and stretched. My favorite jeans were folded and placed in the closet. Hopeful for the day we would reunite, maybe with a cute top and heels, and your father by my side at our favorite restaurant. For days, weeks, and months after your arrival, I poked, sighed, nudged, and tucked extra skin and stretch marks reminiscing of the body that use to stare back in the mirror reflecting at me.

When God gave me you I learned what ‘love at first sight’ truly meant.
The idea of girl meets boy, their eyes lock, hearts patter faster, and suddenly a divine intervention brings them standing face-to-face. Well, my dear, that visual is made for the movies. ‘Love at first sight’ is reserved for a parent and child. It is created in the miraculous moment when you took your first breath and I lost mine staring at you. It occurs at the moment when they placed you in my arms and you never felt like a stranger, but instead a missing piece in our world.

When God gave me you I experienced the magic of 2 am.
With exhaustion racing through my mind and veins, your piercing cry would jolt me upright and to your side. In the quietness of the night, it was just me and you, baby. As I feed you and rocked you, even in the moments when my weary body felt like it was impossible to function, there was pure magic in those 2 am feedings. Something about the darkness and silence that brought out a beautiful peacefulness, and a non-verbal connection between us two.

When God gave me you I became more patient and understanding.
There were moments of frustration, and times when the days and nights felt so long. As you grew there were seasons of change. Things that stressed me before were suddenly replaced by new worries and challenges that needed to be faced. I was tried and I was tested. I gritted my teeth at times and excused myself to my bedroom for my own timeouts. I learned to extend grace to you and myself as we tackled every new endeavor.

When God gave me you I loved my own momma more.
Yes, your grandma became more special in my book too. Suddenly I realized the magnitude of the transformation from woman to mom, and my love and appreciation for my own mom grew when I was gifted you. The reality is I never knew the work, stress, worry, and challenges my own mom went through until I became a mom myself. Looking at you, I could finally see the love she had and gave to me all these years, and every sacrifice she made in between.

When God gave me you I realized my own strength.
From the pain I endured during those hours when my contractions intensified to the day my heart broke in tiny pieces watching kids ignore you for the first time on the playground, I realized your strength starts with me. I bend and break thousands of times quietly in efforts to keep you safe and secure. On days when I feel broken, I look at you and know my strength is derived from the intense love I have for you.

When God gave me you I found myself.
I thought I knew myself. I thought I knew who I was in this world. No, my dear child, I never flourished in this life until God gave me you. I never realized my own attributes to this world until I held, cared for, and loved you. There was so much to learn and oh so much more to gain from the gift a being a mom. When people talk about their legacy and their work on this Earth, I always searched high and low, but now, I look at you and realize if mine is only you, well, then God knew exactly what he was doing when he gave me you.

Fight the Worry to Hear the God Whisper

September 21, 2018

Sometimes I can get pretty deep in my own headspace. Deep, deep. Like, throw your favorite piece of jewelry into the deep blue, only to dive in to frantically search. Holding your breath and propelling yourself as far as you can go knowing full well you will never find it again, headspace. Well, unless you are Rose from the Titanic and you have a team of submarines searching for the Heart of the Ocean.

Driving is when my headspace and I like to sit down for therapy sessions. Oh, and at 2:38, yes, 2:38 am when I seem to spring awake and toss and turn trying to solve every life issue from horizontal in my bed. Headspace you see can be a scary place. One that leaves you with regrets for things you haven’t accomplished, things you wish you said, or done different, moments in time you can’t take back, and sometimes the worse, the corner of headspace where worry likes to creep in and nest.

I am the ultimate worrier. You know Negative Nancy and Happy Harry (I made him up). Well if there was a person for me it would be Worrying Wanda. Every situation, good or bad, I fret. The anxiety that plagued me, yes plagued me, in my mid to late twenties has since disappeared. I credit that to having a child and being busier and more consumed by her and her feelings/needs than my own. But the worry nest still exists and has cute little eggs that like to hatch and chirp around causing me to dive deep into my headspace and fret over the future and most of the time, things out of my control.

If you know my father, you know he is a quiet guy. A man of few words. Just sitting with him quiet but near is really routine and nothing out of sorts. However, he is often full of guidance and sharp words to snap you back into reality, such as “Stop crying. It gets you nowhere.” I heard that a lot as an emotional teen. But as an adult when I worry, it tends to be, “Ashli, is it out of your control?”

“Yes, Dad”

“Okay, well worrying won’t solve the problem then.”

Or sometimes, I will hear, “Is the issue of life or death?”

“No, Dad.”

“Okay, then there is no point of worrying.”

This may be the reason the man has incredible blood pressure and an amazing heart rate.

You know where I go when I find myself drifting off into headspace la la land? I go to a place of purpose in life. What is my calling? Why am I searching so hard, so quietly within myself to know God’s plan for my life? That is my worry. And, I then worry even harder because I know it consumes my mind so much that I am indeed not acting upon my calling, and not hearing what my digital friend, Leslie Means refers to as God Whispers. The little voice you hear in your head saying, “Go for it,” or “Take the leap,” or “Yes, my friend, I do indeed mean that.” Indeed the worry is muffling my cell phone tower, aka communication line to God to really hear him and know what he is calling me to do.

Another digital friend, (I know I have a lot – blogging will do that to you), shared with us this week the death of her beloved sister-in-law. This young woman learned of her diagnosis of pancreatic cancer and within three short months, passed away. She left behind a husband, son, and countless family and friends. I do not know her, but suddenly hearing her story, how hard she fought, and the love her life brought others, has me trying really hard to not allow the worry within my headspace to win.

Oh, I am going there. To my headspace that is. Realizing how short this life is and feeling so sad that it takes tragic events in life to make us hit pause and reevaluate our positions, priorities, and paths. So, I go there ready to fight. Saying Lord, let this worry of not doing, not living my passion, not following my calling subside so that I can hear the God whispers and know what you are nudging me to do. Because I can feel your nudge. It is there. There is just a door shut and locked not letting Your calling out.

And, as the quiet man, I call ‘Dad’ says, “Okay, well the worry won’t solve the problem.” He is right, be gone with you, worry. Get out of the way. I can feel you slowing me down and not allowing me to reap the benefits of what is to be.

So today, I share this with you to urge you too to stop and pause and listen. Fight the worry and fear of what others are thinking or will think of you. FIght the urge to allow everything that scares you to turn you walking the other way. Fight the need to find excuses for why something cannot work. Fight the feeling of guilt for taking care of yourself. And instead, be open and listen, so you may find the God whisper that is trying to get through to you.

We Have An Announcement…

July 19, 2018

If I am being competely honest, 2018 has been a really tough year. Actually the last nine months have proved to be full of trials and tribulations. Moments marked by fear, sadness, heartache, and unnerving anxiety.

Last October, Nathan suffered an unexpected accident which impacted his sight in one eye and left us on a journey of unknown. Trips to a specialist an hour and a half away. The first week consisted of daily appointments which became multiple a week for weeks, dwindling to multiple a month, and then slowly spreading out over the course of months. We saw multiple doctors. We were introduced to the lead doctors at the eye institute as a mere, “must see,” given the rarity of his case. We tried a second opinion three hours away. Slowly this became a new stressful norm, and sure enough time has been our biggest ally. It eventually brought answers, peace, healing, and adaption.

New Year’s Eve weekend I miscarried. It was a heartbreaking experience followed by surges of hormones, emotions, and lots of what if’s and self blame. Being seven weeks along I felt afraid to feel or express the loss, yet I clearly dealt with the sadness associated with losing something. I quietly processed my emotions with very few knowing the reason for my sudden emotional change, because very few knew I was pregnant to begin with. Considering how many women experience a miscarriage, which is 1 in 4, it was a lesson and harsh reality in how uncomfortable the topic still is for people to talk about. Sharing this today took a deep breath in and giant exhale out.

The Saturday before Easter, life suddenly stopped. I woke up with a missed call and a very early morning text from my mother asking if I was awake. Looking at the time the text came through I knew something was wrong. My grandmother suffered a sudden respiratory illness which left her unconscious and on a ventilator four hours away from us, as she was visiting family for the Easter holiday. A week and a half later they removed her from the ventilator and moved her out of ICU. We were relieved by the idea of her progress, so I drove with my Mom for what we thought was going to be a trip to discuss moving her by ambulance to a rehab or hospital near home. Instead, we were blindsided by a prognosis that her lungs and heart were failing. I held her hand, and was able to exchange an “I love you,” before slowly watching her fade mentally and physically from us in a matter of hours. The absolute pain of seeing a woman I admired my whole life, a woman who was so strong, and unbreakable during hard times, lay helpless before me was one of the hardest, if not the hardest moment of my life. I could barely handle the breathtaking pain of realizing the magnitude of the news, so I excused myself from her room multiple times in hopes that helpless wandering through the hospital halls would help me find my breath. If you are ever faced with knowing that you are in a moment that is your last with someone you love so much, let me express that the walk away will be the hardest steps you take in this life. April 14, 2018, she died in the same room I kissed her goodbye in.

A few weeks later I sat in my doctor’s office. After the previous miscarriage and nearly two years of being unable to successfully grow our family, I learned my struggle was not without reasoning and was referred to a fertility specialist for some further discussion.

So, you can imagine my surprise when well before my upcoming appointment I learned we were pregnant.

Clearly, Logan is excited. I mean she has only been asking for the last year, with puppy dog eyes, why she doesn’t have a brother or sister.

Now you may be wondering why I led this announcement with such a backstory?

Well, first this is why I have been so quiet here. My mind has been swirling the last few months, and then the first trimester reared its ugly, “I am going to make you feel less human head,” and I just did not have the mental capability to write.

Secondly, I never want this space to be about a perfect life. Gosh, we all know there are enough blogs and influencers out there with picture perfect portrayals which has never been my thing. I want to connect, and hopefully relate. I also want to reiterate that I am not looking for pity. This is a story, my story, and leads me to my next point.

Third, life has a way of dealing us a deck of cards with winning and losing hands. If these turbulent nine months have taught me anything it is patience and surrender.

I have prayed, pleaded, bargained, screamed, and cried to God. I have started my prayers with, “I know this is about me again,” far too many times. I have questioned Him with “why?” And, yet, through all the sadness, heartache, pain, and tears, here we are nine months later rejoicing in His goodness, and this exciting blessing.

It is amazing how much can change in such a short period of time. God does not promise a life of happiness, absent from heartache, and He doesn’t deliver us our sorrows. What He does deliver is the promise to trust in Him through the highs and lows of life. To surrender to His timing, and to have patience in the journey.

While I give Him all the glory of this exciting new chapter and life, I can’t help but smile thinking my Meema had a good sit down with him in Heaven about this new little blessing.

We are excited to share this new story with you and clearly I have some great new content for this space and my social channels. Have I told you how much I love you? Thank you for being a follower and reading along.

Someone Is Missing

April 21, 2018

The day of her funeral I found myself feeling an immense sense of emptiness, sadness, and exhaustion. If you have lost someone exceptionally close to you, I imagine you can relate. The feeling is numb, with pangs of sorrow that stab your gut out of nowhere.

After the service had ended, after following the hearse, after a brief, intimidate family moment at the cemetery, my husband and I were en route to pick up our daughter from his mother’s house. The only way I know how to describe what my body and mind was going through is to relate it to a plug hidden somewhere on my body that had been released. You know, the plastic plugs that are placed on inflatable balloon toys? Someone must have pulled it from me. But, BAM out of no where, as if someone decided to blow hot air into the deflated balloon, bringing it back to life, I would be hit with the deepest sadness and reminder of her being gone. Sobs would overcome me and I ached in a need that I knew nothing could fulfill.

Family and friends gathered after the service for food and togetherness. I still find it odd that we as American’s observe the conclusion of death services with a lunch/dinner service. Usually eating is the last thing on most of our minds, yet we gather and try to carry on some sort of conversation with those around us.

As I walked into the room, holding my three-year-old’s hand, searching for a seat, I found myself subconsciously scouring the room. “Who is missing?” I recall thinking, my eyes gazing up and down the rows of tables and chairs, seeing face after face. “Someone is missing.” I felt anxious, identifying my siblings in the room, to make sure they all had made it back from the cemetery. There was my mom and dad, paternal grandparents, and cousins. As I made eye contact again with my mom, the words were on the tip of my tongue, “Who is missing?” But quickly before the breath turned into a voice, a heavy weight hit me, it was her. She was missing.

It is a moment, a feeling, and a reality I will always remember when I think back to her services. She was missing. She will always be missing.

And, that is the part that lingers with someone’s family after death. A feeling I have never experienced fully until she left us.

When someone suffers with grief – noticed I said with, not through, because we never get through the grief, often friends and family with best intentions will say things such as, “It will get better,” or “Every day it gets easier.” The sentiments are meant well, but being so fresh off of her death, it feels too soon to imagine those days. The reality is there is now a point in our lives that we will always refer to as with her in it and with her gone. Living now in the “with her gone” phase is a mix of guilt and sadness.

I find myself wishing for more time to make every day count. I should have visited her more. I should have called more often. I could have taken Logan to see her more and made more time. More, more, more – everything is about the more I wish I could have done.

Then there is the sadness part. Realizing every major milestone that now lies ahead of us, she won’t physically be here for. She is missing. A giant void is now in her place.

I am a Christian. I believe in God and I know she is living eternity in Heaven. I rejoice in knowing she watches me and her bright spirit is around us. We breathe her in. She walks beside us. She lives through us, she lives through me. But, I am here on Earth and she is not, and right now that does not feel like enough. That is where the sorrow begins and doesn’t end.

I read a quote shortly after my grandmother died, “Grief is love with no place to go.” Oh, how true. I have nowhere to send all this love since she is not physically here to receive it. Instead it sits inside my heart spinning round and round, and I sit here missing her.

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Today you can honor her or someone you are missing by sharing kindness. I encourage you to spread love and a random act of kindness in their name.

We Are All in Good Hands

March 18, 2018

As I sit here sipping my coffee, enjoying the last few days of winter sunshine that beams through the double glass doors and across my dining room table, I can’t help but hum a little tune and summon visions from decades ago from the depths of my memory. Flashbacks of Karen leading the Sunday school class in song, her wide-brimmed glasses raising every so slightly as they ride with her big smile against the top of her rosy cheeks.

“He’s got the whole world in His hands. He’s got the whole world in His hands. He’s got the whole world in His hands. He’s got the whole world in His hands.”

The tune like an earworm on my mind.

Do you watch ‘This Is Us’? If you do and did not catch the season finale last Tuesday, fear not, I am not about to ruin anything for you. And, if you find yourself reading my blog right now, with no clue what ‘This Is Us’ even is, then please find a TV with On Demand RIGHT NOW. Just kidding. No judgment (okay slight judgment) here.

In the finale, Randall is giving a speech at his sister Kate’s wedding. “It’s taken me 37 years to accept the fact that there is absolutely zero point in trying to control the future,” Randall says. “Cause nobody knows where we’ll be. Not even a year from now.”

And, that is the absolute truth. Next year, next month, even tomorrow is not a given, and yet with that knowledge, it still hits us by surprise when devastating news shatters our lives knocking the wind out of our sails or our feet out beneath us.

I was talking to someone who was given a bit of a health scare recently. Finding a lump in her breast, she said before her mammogram, “I dread tomorrow, for I fear my life will change forever in that instant.” That fear is what drives us crazy and many times drives those to their knees to pray.

My family too is no stranger to life’s unexpected turns and the darkness and despair one feels when your world changes in an instance. In the fall, my husband suffered an eye injury. A story I shared here on the blog. While, we are grateful, faithful, and blessed, the news of his sudden partial sight loss was traumatic and the fear of what life looked like for us in the days, and months ahead were raw and new during each doctor’s appointment as more was revealed. I prayed for God to hold us in his hands. To wrap us up and scoop us in and carry us through.

So do not fear, for I am with you;
do not be dismayed, for I am your God.
I will strengthen you and help you;
I will uphold you with my righteous right hand.
Isaiah 41:10

While those days felt dark, there also was so much light and hope. Small signs from above allowed me to breathe in the madness, and constant season of holding our breath. Like the time, we traveled in the thick heavy fog to one of Nathan’s daily appointments and with the radio down low, I prayed for a sign that we would be okay. Within moments, through the thick fog, a cross appeared in the distance along the right-side of the highway. I was mesmerized, eyes locked at this single cross that seemed so clear in the fog, all while I struggled to sometimes even see the highway lines. As we got closer, I realized it was the back structure of a sign addressing the opposite lane. The two pieces of wood, one a signpost and the other, a structure to hold the sign itself, formed a cross. I chuckled as we drove by and then realized, it was my sign. The cross was God, showering me with a sense of peace. While the fog was real and dense in the air outside our car, it too was the greatest foggy season our lives had ever endured, yet He was constantly there holding us.

Sometimes it takes heartache and sadness for us to look up with open hearts and mind, needing Him to hold our hands and guide our way. But the truth is we are all in good hands, each and every day. When I think back to our season last fall, I tend to think of the moments I felt more spiritually connected to God than any other time in my life, and it usually is because of moments like the story I shared above when I felt His love and guidance through signs from above. The reality is if we look even harder, God is holding us in his hands, even when we don’t ask him to. He is holding us through the happiest moments, regretful decisions, joyous occasions, sorrow, times of ultimate need, and even on times we may have ignored Him.

He’s got the whole world in his hands, including your whole world. As Isaiah 41:10 reads – “Fear not, for I am with you.” Cast your worries today away, for we all can take a deep breath and release in knowing, we are all, always in good hands.

In Sickness and In Health

November 11, 2017

We stood in the farm field. It was a warm late-August day. The summer sun peeking in and out behind delightful white puffy clouds, shining through enough to give us bursts of warmth, but hiding enough to be our photographer’s dream.

The day was everything we had imagined and more. I, an anxious, worry-wart, managed to summons the calmness from the depths of my being. Unbeknownst to me, this chillness did exist and I was ever present at our wedding. Looking back I know I am a lucky one. Too often brides stress their way through their big day, but I truly enjoyed every second of our wedding and lived out each moment presently.

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God’s Grace and Prayers

October 22, 2017

Today is a follow up to yesterday’s Post. Thank you for the overwhelming love and support. So many of you reached out to share your stories, or just general thinking of you messages and prayers. Thank you.

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On Friday Nathan and I traveled to the Wilmer Eye Institute at John Hopkins for a second opinion. Knowing they are one of the leading eye institutions in the country, we were more than hopefully – we were expecting different input and outcome scenarios.

I think at one point Nathan even said, “I am just hoping they will say, ‘oh, yeah we have these drops’ and they will put them in and I will see again.”

Of course we were being extreme with that scenario but the point was we were very hopefully.

Naturally I have been praying for Nathan through this experience. My conversations with God began the very first night when we found ourselves in the Emergency Room facing the unknown.

God will not make it all go away just because we magically want it to. God will not fix something because we feel it is not fair. We are good people and faithful people but that does not excempt us from the challenges of life.

God most certainly did not put us in this circumstance but he will see us through.

And, through it all He has shown us His grace. The days before Wilmer and even during our visit I often reached out in prayer. Asking for hope and good news. That was all I wanted or needed – some hope and some good news. I trusted him for the outcome and put everything in his hands. Saying, ‘Show us the way and we will give it all to you.’

Our outcome on Friday was not the miracle fix-all we wished for. Yet God did answer my prayers – ‘some hope and some good news.’

We learned that the macular tear or hole that had shown itself two weeks ago on a scan at our doctor’s office and was the reason Nathan’s sight has been compromised, had healed. Actually no longer existed. Miracle!

As the photo technician took the images I scanned the screen for the hole I had seen but it was gone. I kept quiet on my findings because I am no medical professional and I did not want to get Nathan’s hopes up.

Soon a resident doctor confirmed my analysis and stated, “I see no macular hole.” There was a spark in Nathan and the biggest smile I has seen on his face in some time.

Looking back I guess we did not even realize well if it is gone why can’t he still see? Instead we were so hopeful.

A few moments later the Specialist came in the room and met Nathan, reviewed his files and performed an exam. Then the bad news was delivered. Nathan’s macular layers were bruised and basically collapsed. This was indeed why he still could not see. The bigger gulp, our time at Wilmer would end before it began as there was nothing they could do. No surgery, no medicines and no magic drop that would cure it all away.

She was kind and careful with her delivery and shared that time could eventually, one day, heal some of his vision but there was no sure fire solution or option. She gave him the hope with a 50/50 shot of it staying the same or improving naturally over time.

The crushing news has been the story of this journey – high hopes and then sudden bad news.

As we left, I felt an inner calmness though which was a new feeling through this process.

I prayed for God to give me hope and good news and he did. The macular hole we prayed would heal is doing just that. In fact, not even showing! While we did indeed learn more and those results may not have been what we were ultimately wishing for, I realized it was still exactly what I prayed for.

Time can heal Nathan and for that we remain grateful.

God did something else though in the halls of John Hopkins. He gave me perspective.

Somehow looking for a restroom before Nathan’s appointment we accidentally found ourselves in the Cancer Center at John Hopkins.

I looked into the Radiation waiting room. I witnessed a husband holding the hand of a frail wife with a cap on her bald head. I watched a sister or maybe best friend hold the hand of a young women, maybe twenty something, who had on a cap and mask to cover her mouth and most likely prevent the spread of germs to her system.

As Nathan used the restrooms, I cried in the hallway. Dear God, you are powerful and mighty. Our situation which is hard and challenging could be so much worse.

Nathan has his whole life to improve, and that is good news. Suddenly I realized we could have been there at that same Hospital receiving devastating news of merely only a small amount of time left.

I have learned through this stressful time that God’s grace is humbling. The strength of our Faith has grown through this process. I know that my prayers are being answered and He is working in ways that are not always obvious.

I know that God put us in that Cancer Center for perspective. I know He is to thanked for the success we have been graced with the healing. I know that He gave me the hope and good news I prayed for, and even though there was still bad news and the journey continues I am learning that the hope I prayed for always existed. For God has the final say.

Thank you all for being a part of this journey with us. Much love.