Only God

Mother's Day 

Jubilent parental faces reeling with joy and a little disbelief, and a little boy waking from anesthesia.

It wouldn't be a visit to Lurie without seeing our favorite, Katie!  This time she brought our friend, Molly, who was our nurse during stem cell transplant.  We much prefer seeing them both in a random waiting room and being goofy!

A long day at the hospital shows what love looks like.

It's a little hard to appreciate, but we've all gone gray in May for brain tumor awareness month.

What do you do when you're this cool?

Silly sunglasses and PJs - the perfect combination.

This week has been a lot about the sunglasses apparently.  Here's another cool crowd sporting their shades.

After weeks of building anxiety - trying to avoid grappling with the implications of some terrible oncology statistics - we take a breath.  All it took, was Dr. Lulla walking into the waiting room with a bewildered smile on his face and thumbs up.  That spot that we saw on the MRI 5 weeks ago, the one that made him give us 70/30 odds when pressed - it's gone.  It's not stable or just a little smaller - it's gone, and we are left saying, "only God".

Thank you to the many people from far and wide that held our family up in prayer.  Prayed for a clear answer.  Prayed for a miracle.  We do not know the exact mechanism that God used to resolve the spot, but we have no doubt that God heard your prayers.  Just as the judge granted the request of the persistent widow in Luke 18, through your persistent prayers, God has granted our request.  And that's the whole point of the parable anyway - to always pray and not give up.

This experience has taught me again to stop looking for signs in everything.  I already melted down over the 3 water bottles at Costco, but I was also freaking out about the rain on Tuesday, wondering if Chicago was preparing to cry with us.  I read into the bad traffic making us 25 min late, wondering if the bad news was just being delayed.  It felt like a bad sign that we didn't see Ken, the shark (as our family calls him) in the Lurie fish tank, even though we rarely see him.  I promise I'm not superstitious - I promise, but apparently worry makes me read into everything.  I'm going to try and stop, although that might be easier said then done - when we talk, please keep me in check.

We are overwhelmed with gratitude, thankfulness.  We are speechless in wonder and joy.  It comes still in waves of appreciation of knowing we have more mundane ahead.  And yet, even as there is so much celebration, relief and happiness - slowly something else sinks in.  We are still in the weeds.  We could be faced with all of this again at Jonah's next scan.  Having a scary spot that resolves is just as real in the cancer walk as having a scary spot that doesn't resolve.  As a friend said - what we have been through simply underscores the need for more research - in our small Lurie cancer community, there are frequent terminal scares and sometimes they end ok, and sometimes they don't.  We won't do our big fundraising  push until September, but if you ever feel moved to impact pediatric cancer, the neuro-oncology program at Lurie stewards donations well towards research.

As we find our footing again - cherishing every day as precious, but also not feeling like we have to count every minute - we step into summer.  The timing is again an "only God" thing that we can start our summer of celebration in the best and biggest way.  Thank you for all of your love and support.  Just as you have wept with us, now we all rejoice together!