It’s been a kind-of weird week around here and I’m not even referring to the ridiculous cold and blizzard that shut down I-70 between St Louis and KC! It’s been good in that I continue to feel better and stronger every day! I still have a long crawl up the hill, but it’s so nice to see the continued improvement. My labs weren’t the best this week. My liver isn’t as angry but my white count stays low and my platelets dropped again :( It’s only been a week since we stopped the medicine that was felt to be the culprit and Dr. Vose put another one “on hold” as of today so we’ll recheck labs on Friday and see where I stand. Presuming we don’t get more snow, I’ll be going back to Omaha next Monday. The hard part of this week is that I learned that a fellow patient who went through a stem cell transplant with me last summer passed away. I only knew her for a short time but her faith, drive and fight made such an impact on us. I know that she is in such a better place now and am so glad that her suffering is done, but just wish I could know a little more of “the greater plan”. It’s become so clear, that without a belief in Christ, suffering would make no sense. Even with faith, I guess you can’t “make sense” of it, but at least I know that there is a plan and I’m just not smart enough to interpret all the pieces. We beg and plead for things that don’t happen even though God says, “ask and you shall receive”, but we remove that from context. When a child begs for something that isn’t good for them, parents have a responsibility to say “no” to protect them. The child can’t understand that, but it’s for their own good and one day they will understand if they don’t get jaded by the refusal.
In this you greatly rejoice, though now for a little while you may have had to suffer grief in all kinds of trails. These have come so that your faith-of greater worth than gold, which perishes even though refined by fire-may be proved genuine and may result in praise, glory and honor when Jesus Christ is revealed. 1 Peter 1:6-7
