He is in the details!

God's hand has been evident in all the details since we received Andrew's diagnosis on Wednesday!  Here are just a few of the things God has taught me through my wrestling, pleading, surrendering..

-We serve a BIG God!!!

-He has already prepared us for this journey with our daughter Grace (for those of you new to the blog, Grace was born with Down Syndrome and a very broken heart...  we almost lost her twice in her first 15 months of life, she had to be life flighted from Texas to Boston for an emergency surgery for a total of 5 open heart surgeries and she will require more surgeries and interventions, but God was so faithful), having walked us to the edge of ourselves and delivered us once, there is no reason He can't do it again (if that is His will).

-Our village that has morphed into an army (Andrew's Army... I like the sound of that!) are absolutely, positively incredible!  Y'all have known our needs before I even knew our needs.  Every single prayer, sharing of Scripture, change of your Facebook profile picture to Andrew's face, requesting of your friends and family to pray for our boy, text messages/messages of encouragement, gifts to make my children smile, sending someone to clean my house, taking me away for a pedicure, meals, and the list goes on, has literally held us up when breathing and literally putting one foot in front of the other felt impossible.  God has used each of you to hold us up, so please don't let the fact that I haven't responded to your comment, message, or text make you feel like it didn't matter because every single one is so special to me; we have just been so incredibly busy lately (not going to bed until midnight every night and waking early the next morning), I haven't had the time to respond and for that I ask you to please forgive me.  Please don't stop "leaning in" to us, we are in for the fight of our lives and we need each of you in the fox hole with us.

-We are certain that God led us to The Sanctuary Fellowship for such a time as this!  I literally can't even begin to put words together to adequately describe the way they run into the fire when there brothers and sisters in Christ are in crisis.  If you don't have a church home that speaks truth, hope, and love into your life, I pray God would lead you to one and if you live in the Sugar Land area, please, please, please come to our church.  We would love to worship with you!

-As I found myself wrestling with God, anxiously begging Him for what I want and worrying about what our life would look like a day, week, month, year, 5 years, 10 years (you get the picture) from now, God reminded me that His word says "My grace is sufficient for you" in our time of need and that time is right now.  He is giving me the measure of grace I need to get through this moment, not those in the future yet because I'm not there yet, and I can rest and trust He already has those details worked out according to His perfect plan because He is a good God.

-I know I can trust His plan because of who He says He is, but I have seen His hand in all of the details already.  We have an appointment at MD Anderson Cancer Center tomorrow at 11:00.  We will likely transition our care from TCH (Texas Children's) to MD Anderson, not because we are in anyway displeased with TCH, but because Andrew's form of cancer is super rare in kids and more common in adults (although, when I say more common, that really just means it is rare, instead of super rare), so MD Anderson has treated adults with this form of cancer before, increasing their knowledge and resources.  There are so many more layers of blessings that have led us to MD Anderson, but I will save that for another post because it's too special to just briefly mention :-).  Will you please pray that we have a great appointment at 11:00 tomorrow, where we would walk out hopeful and with a clear plan that we can act on sooner than later (we just want to do something for our boy ASAP, I can't stand the thought that we are giving the cancer one more second to spread)?  I always get nervous about meeting with Oncologists because they are so matter of fact that I can walk away feeling defeated, will you please pray against that?

-The fact that Grace is only 4 years old and has no idea what's going on (outside of Bubba having tummy pains, which she likes to pray for often) is such a blessing because she is a great source of comic relief, sweetness, and her typical Gracie spunk!

PRAYER REQUEST:
-tomorrow's appointment with Dr. Huh at 11:00.
-further scans don't show the cancer has spread to the lymph node on the aorta or anywhere else in his body and the surgeons are confident they can remove the tumor on his pancreas and lymph nodes.
-relief from the agonizing tummy pain he is still suffering from :-(
-Andrew had a rough day at school when a few kids found out about him having cancer and said things like "your going to die" or "you are going to lose your hair" or "ewe! you have cancer, get away."  Andrew came home and said he just sat in class trying not to cry.  You can imagine the heart break and fury this mama bear felt, but the school addressed it first thing the next morning and has handled everything exceptionally well, in terms of supporting our family in every way possible and then some.  Will you just pray that God would allow school to be a safe place where he can just feel "normal" and not a kid with cancer?


In other news:
-Abby's basketball team went to the finals and won!  So proud of her and her team, which is made up of a good number of girls that were playing basketball for the first time this season (this was only Abby's second season playing, but she loves it and I love watching it!).  A mom from the team we played caught one of Abby's crazy shots on her camera and came over to show it to me and then sent it to me.  Isn't that so sweet?!?!

-The big kids annual Fun Run was this weekend and I was brought to tears as I watched Andrew run his heart out for the mile race and he beat the majority of his buddies in his grade!  Cancer is not holding that boy down, praise be to God!!!

Headed to the race...

Grace getting ready for the Toddler Dash with one of her besties from school!

Look at that boy (he's in the blue shirt)!!!

Clearly, I'm a terrible photographer, but there is Abby in the orange shirt!  She was flying so it was hard to get a good pic.

Andrew's Army, we love you and couldn't be more humbled by and grateful for every ounce of your love and support!  I will post an update after tomorrows appointment.