Open Skies

"Praise Him under open skies, everything breathing praising God!"

--David Crowder Band

I took this pic on my phone today while I was coming home from running a bunch of errands. Sometimes I look up at the big, beautiful sky and can't help but feel a sense of peace. A sense that God is so big and I am so small. But yet, He still cares for me and knows my name. I love when God reveals Himself through nature.

I think He knew I needed some reassurance that "He's got the whole world in His hands." Today there was good news and bad news about about my mom's condition. The good news is that she will likely go home on Saturday! This is huge. She has wanted to be at home now for weeks and is just craving the comforts of her own bed, her comfortable chair, and the familiar sights and smells of her own home. It will be so nice for us to visit her there instead of the hospital room. We've learned that cramming three busy children into a small hospital room is not the best idea. Also, she is breathing better. Her oxygen saturation today stayed at 100% and she is down to using three liters of oxygen as opposed to six last week. Tomorrow they will try two liters and hopefully she can even wean herself down to 1.5 before she goes home. Also, she is having a minor surgery tomorrow to insert a permanent drain tube into her lungs so that she can empty the fluid off as needed. This will be good because now she won't have to struggle to breathe as much as the fluid builds up. She was being "tapped" (and by that we mean a needle inserted into her back) to drain off fluid every 7-10 days. And her infectious disease doctor has changed her to a more powerful antibiotic to try to completely get rid of any trace of infection from her incision site. All of this is good news and I completely celebrate it!

On the other hand, my mom's incision has begun to open up again. So today they took the remaining stitches out and are using the wound vacuum again. More than anything else, we need for her incision to heal completely. If not, she will be constantly open to infection and we don't want that! We are praying that the wound vacuum will work this time. Please join with me in that specific request. It is our top priority in restoring my mom's health. Her surgeon said he is not going to open her up again, so if the wound vacuum doesn't work, he is simply out of options. In the mean time, she will wear it indefinitely and continue to pray for healing.

This whole thing has been such a test of my faith. My friend shared with me tonight about Shadrach, Meshach and Abednego (Daniel chapters 1-3). She mentioned how God could have spared them from the firey furnace if he had chosen to. But instead he chose to walk through the fire with them so that they would have an even greater testimony of what God did. We are walking through a "fire" right now, and I am so grateful that in the end (no matter the outcome) we will have a testimony of how God walked right next to us the whole way through.