Heart On My Sleeve

My wife is taking the night off from updating her blog and allowing me to share some of the ways we have been processing these last few days. One of the things I have grown to love about my wife is her transparency and vulnerability with people – she truly wears her heart on her sleeve at times. She can be so open about her raw emotions, her thoughts, her failures and weaknesses. This just does not come as naturally for me. Anytime I am asked to share in front of a group of people or write a post for her blog she always says something like “don’t be afraid to be a real with people”. Not that I don’t want to be real with people, but there can be vulnerability when you open up your life. But our desire has been to continually glorify Christ in the midst of our weaknesses, our feelings of inadequacies or even in our frailness. We often feel like we have to present this strong, “got it all together” image to the world. But it is in our times of weakness and desperation that we often see the Lord so clearly. That is why after the Lord tells Paul in 2 Corinthians 12 that “My grace is sufficient for you, for power is perfected in weakness,” that Paul responds by saying then “I will rather boast about my weakness so that the power of Christ my dwell in me.” We all know deep down that we are weak. I am faced with the reality of that today more than I ever have been. But the creator of the world is not limited by our weaknesses; in fact he uses them to display His power. And that’s why my wife’s reminder to me is a good one as I write this blog. 

Since we have received news from Noah’s doctor that he needs a pacemaker and a heart transplant my heart has been extremely heavy. I have had some despairing thoughts at different times over the past couple of days. I’ve anguished over the thought of having to tell my son some of the difficulties that lie ahead of him. I think about how his life might significantly change and how he will be faced so clearly with the reality that Paul talks about in 2 Corinthians that “…our outer man is decaying...” I know that our life on this earth will not last forever, but to be faced with the possibility of this so soon with our son brings me to the end of myself. As we sat in Church last night these are the thoughts that literally brought me to my knees. As we sang worship to our God I cried out to Him like I never have before. I cry out to Him because He is the same God today as He was last week. As I read Gods word it does not say that life will be easy in this world. He actually promises the opposite. Paul goes on to say in that 2 Corinthians passage “For momentary, light affliction is producing for us an eternal weight of glory far beyond all comparison, while we look not at the things which are seen, but at the things which are not seen; for the things which are seen are temporal, but the things which are not seen are eternal.” Our tendency is to cling to things that are temporary, to try and reconcile or block the painful things in our lives. We even begin to think about temporal things as not temporal. When I seriously consider this thought I can’t think of anything in this world...no matter what you believe that does not come to an end or fail us. Even if medicine had the power to cure every disease we still die. Only in Christ will we experience “an eternal weight of glory far beyond all comparison.” So that is why I fall to my knees in worship of the true, eternal God, Creator of the universe. That is why I praise the name of Jesus above all other names. In the midst of some of the most difficult circumstance in my life I have experienced Gods faithfulness, His goodness and His power to save but not because He will heal every disease or problem we face in this world but because one day He will wipe away every tear. And I don’t blindly place my trust in this hope. I know He will because Christ died for me and for you. He has paid the ultimate price that we could never pay so that we could have relationship with Him for eternity. God does not just say that He loves us, He demonstrated that love on the cross and not because we begged Him too but because “God so loved the world that He gave His only begotten Son, that whoever believes in Him shall not perish, but have eternal life.” That’s why Paul calls it “light and momentary affliction”. To God be the glory!

Thanks for allowing me to process all of this with you. I did not anticipate all that would come out when I started this post. I now have to spend the rest of the day trying to get my heart off of my sleeve and back in my chest. Thank you all for your prayers and support of our family. We can not imagine this time without all of you.

I’ll end with a quick update from today’s appointment with Dr. Chang (Hannah’s Doctor). He agreed to meet with us to go over the results of the test and confirmed what Noah’s doctor had told us. It sounds like Noah is definitely looking at a heart transplant but they are not able to give us the timing yet. We have another appointment in a couple of weeks with the Doctor from the Heart Transplant Institute at UCLA. We hope to get more details then.  I will let Melody give a more detailed update on todays visit as she is better with these things.