A Swift Answer!

I was already up at 5:30am because of one of those migraines I get about once a year that won't respond to the meds and makes me want to be sick. When I opened my computer at 6:30, immediately a message popped up on Facebook from my BFF. "Are you there?" Something's not right, I immediately thought. There's no reason she would be hitting me up on Facebook in the 6am hour if everything was fine. (She later told me that she had the same thought when her mother called her a little earlier.)

I replied that I was. "My dad is missing." was her response. I was stunned. All I could muster was, "What??? When did this happen? What can I do?" He hadn't returned home from work last night and since there isn't a time clock for his job, there was no time frame for how long he had been unaccounted for.

Immediately I began an e-mail/text message blitz asking people to stop and pray now. I called Jeff at work. I called Linda who is overseas at a wedding. I called our prayer chain manager AND sent him an e-mail. I wanted Jenn to know that we were lifting her dad and her family up and surrounding them in prayer.

This family has not had an easy time of things in the decade and a half since Jenn and I were roomies back in college. Her middle brother was killed in a horrific car accident. Her mother has suffered with multiple health setbacks. Her younger brother was hospitalized with meningitis when our babies were 6 and 7 months old. Her grandmother is currently recovering from a stroke.

I must admit that as I began to pray, I was kind of throwing my hands in the air asking God what else they were going to have to go through.

It was around 10am and I was laying in the guest room trying not to throw up when Jude came in to tell me my phone was ringing. It way Jenn! This must mean news!

And news it was. Her dad had been found. He works in the forestry department and had fallen in a well in a neighboring county. I have no idea how they found him except to say it was the hand of God. The way they close up old wells leaves much to be desired and they do not keep very good track of them after they are closed.

As we were speaking, a rescue team was working to get him out of the well and then they would be heading to the ER to assess his injuries. We know he has a head injury at the least.

But he is ALIVE! And I am giving praise to God for his swift answer to our prayers!

I'm adding a new button to my sidebar. OneGirl is another bloggy friend of mine who is going into her senior year in high school. Earlier in the year, she began having some issues with her health where she was randomly passing out and just a couple of days ago she was diagnosed with a brain tumor. She will be having surgery really soon. Please keep her in your prayers. Her faith is strong, and she is totally relying on God's grace to carry her through. And the mom in me wants you to pray for her mom, too. I can not imagine walking through this with Jude. Pray for God to give her mom that strength that is beyond human understanding. 

The God of Slim Chances

Ours is the God of everything, even slim chances. I've been praying along with thousands of other people over the past 8 months for baby Stellan. On Monday, I honestly was thinking he was going to fly to Jesus. But ours is the God of slim chances, even when we forget to have faith.

Click here to see the interview with Stellan's parents after the surgery that saved his life.

Please continue praying for Veiyah and Stellan

Both of these sweet babies are back in the hospital tonight as I type.
Veiyah went in yesterday to get a feeding tubs that goes directly through her belly into her stomach. They expected her to be released today, but the doctor decided he wanted to watch her another day. Please pray that all goes as needed for her to go home with her parents and sisters tomorrow. Also, pray for her mom, Ani, who misses Veiyah's twin, Aderah, so badly. Aderah was born to Jesus.
Stellan has been experiencing SVT (a really, really fast heart beat) again lately. The new medication that they found to work before he left the hospital last time has stopped working and the new medicine will not be in until tomorrow. He still has about 19 pounds to gain before the doctor feels good about doing the ablation which will almost certainly lead to the requirement of a pacemaker. Please pray that they will find something that will work until that time.

Please pray for the Freeman family

One of the blog babies that we pray for, Kayleigh Ann Freeman, went to be with Jesus after a courageous 10 month long fight. Please pray for her mommy and daddy and her siblings. You can find their story here

or if you are home tomorrow at 10am, eastern, you can watch them tell their story on The Doctors on your ABC station.

Please, please lift these parents up in prayer. Sweet Kayleigh was supposed to be making great progress then last month had a surgery that caused her to lose oxygen, rendering her brain dead. Now they are going home to a house filled with baby stuff, but no baby. Ask God to mend their broken hearts.

YIPEEEEE!!!

We are giving God praise tonight because this little boy,












baby Stellan was discharged from Children's Hospital in Boston today and gets to fly home to the midwest tomorrow. He's been in the hospital for almost six weeks, endured countless drugs to try to control his heart rate, had a (failed) ablation surgery, and then finally the doctor found a drug that worked with his heart.

Lord willing, Stellan and his MckMama will land in MN tomorrow and be reunited with Stellan's daddy and his two older brothers and sister. Please pray with us that the new medicine will continue to control his heart rate until he is old enough to get a pacemaker without open heart surgery.

6 months, a prayer request, and a post which reveals that I can not spell.

Can you believe that 6 months ago, tonight, we did not have Jude yet? I went to bed thinking he would not be here for another four and a half weeks. I am so glad that God had other plans. He is growing SOOOOO quickly, weighing in two weeks ago at 17 pounds, 12 ounces, and measuring 25.5 inches. He stands if you hold his hands, sits unsupported for about 30 seconds, laughs like crazy, and is rolling over more and more (though still not consistently).

Jude is posing here (with the sign on which I misspelled the word months. Give me a break. I haven't slept 8 hours in over a year!) to let our little brother in Christ, Stellan know that we are praying for him.
I heard about Stellan from Veiyah's mommy, Ani. Stellan's mommy, Jennifer, has a blog that you can read if you click the MacMiracle button to the right in the side bar. Stellan was not supposed to be born alive. But God had other plans, and not only was he born alive, but he was born completely healthy. Then a couple of weeks ago, his heart fell into something called supra ventricular tachycardia. Basically, his heart has been failing over the past two weeks. It will beat well over 200 beats per minutes, then it gets so tired that it can not get blood all the way to his extremities. His mommy is tired, but she exhibits influential faith in our Lord for this matter. Last I checked, he went 15 hours out of SVT, which is a major praise, but I beg those of you who read my blog who are praying folk, please check out Stellan's story and pray fervently for him and his family.

Please pray for baby Veiyah and her family, too. They found out that because of the time period that she went without oxygen caused something to happen to her brain. It was revealed by a trip to the ophthalmologist. Then while in the ophthalmologist's office, she began having seizure like episodes. I am sure that Ani is tired, too. Yet, here is another woman who is putting the health of her child completely in the Lord's hands. I only pray that if am faced with any such trials with Jude or any subsequent child, that I would follow the example set before my by these two women. As it is, I hug Jude a little tighter each night since I came to know about these sweet babies' struggles.

Woah! Cranky baby alert!

Who stole my otherwise happy, calm baby and replaced him with a screaming, inconsolable, won't-take-a-nap one?

Since last Thursday, we have been dealing with the teething monster. It started out with him being a little fussy and not nursing well on Thursday, and if you've seen my kid, you know he likes to eat. So then on Friday, starting just after noon, it was an all out scream fest. Thank the good Lord that Ellie was in a good mood that day because Jude was very high maintenance from then on out. Ellie sat in the bouncy seat and watched T.V. (sorry Jenn and Daryl) in my room while I gave Jude a bath. Then finally he fell asleep only to wake up when Jenn came to get Ellie.

I tried cold teething rings, frozen wash cloths, crushed ice in a baby sock, Tylenol. Then only way I was able to get him to eat after that was when he was so tired from crying that he was falling asleep.

Then Saturday, Jeff brought home some teething tablets, but Jude was still a wreck, so needless to say, we did not get to go on our date. I just did not want to put Grandma Karen through the type of night I had on Friday. We finally figured that the magic bullet was to give Jude the Tylenol and teething tablets together about half an hour before nursing. But, we didn't figure it out until we had already taken him to the after hours clinic. I just wanted to make sure he didn't have another ear infection. So, he fell asleep on the way to Wal-mart, woke long enough to watch us eat lunch at the Wal-mart Subway, and then fell back asleep. So, we decided to just walk around Wal-mart for an extra hour and call that our date. Nothing says Happy Valentines Day like the Rollback Man.

Yesterday, he was going bananas before church, but he was an angel all through church. He even slept half an hour during the sermon. Then when we got home, he slept for three hours straight and had no more problems the rest of the night.

Today, while Emily was here with Izzy and Ty, he got all wound up again, but after a brief nap and a nurse, he seemed to calm down and just enjoyed himself with watching Em's kids and their antics. As they were getting ready to leave, he fell asleep and has been out for about an hour and a half now. I hope he gets a good long nap in and that the worst of it is over, but when in the world are those little buggers going to poke through? Soon, I hope or Florida will be a real exciting adventure.

P.S. Please keep praying for Veiyah (see the post below "Praying for Veiyah"). There have been several ups and downs over the past couple of days, including her vital signs going down so low while she was on the life support. Then they went up and the Dr. told her parents they might be able to close up the chest in a few days if she held steady. But this morning her vitals plummeted again. You can feel from the tone in her writing that Veiyah's mom is just so weary from all of this, having just burried one child a few months ago (Veiyah's twin) to all these heart surgeries on her baby. Pray, pray, pray.