I am SO excited to officially announce that I get to spend a whole week in July with this awesome family!
During the third week of July, I am blessed to be joining this family at Victory Lane Camp. Victory Lane Camp is a camp in Indiana especially for children with disabilities and their families! It is a Christian Camp that helps give families and members of their communities valuable training to empower the children and the family members. My role will be an extra set of hands for Tom and Angela as well as a partner in crime for the boys ;). There are special sessions just for them as parents and I will be able to hang out with the boys while they are in the sessions as well as helping however I can throughout the week. (Maybe even let them have a date night during the week ;) )
I am so excited for this opportunity to get to know the Humphrey family better as well as just love on them for the week. But, in order to get there, I need to raise about $200 more dollars!
This is the link to their website http://victorylanecamp.org/...if you would like help get me to camp, you can just click the big "DONATE" and be sure to put my name in the subject line. (the link is through paypal, so if you do not have a paypal account.. you can always give me the check/cash and I can send it along to them.)
Thank you so much for helping invest in my life so I can then invest in the Humphrey Family! I will be sure to have lots and lots of pictures and videos from our week at camp!
In case you don't know about this crazy fun family, here is the info Angela provided for the camp bio:
["After 28 years of marriage and as our 2 biological children were flying from the nest, we began praying in earnest about what God had next for us. On our 3rd mission trip, we believe God answered those prayers when we met Ian on a visit to the Robin’s Nest Children’s Home in Jamaica. Despite having Cerebral Palsy, being non-verbal and non-ambulatory, Ian was a delightful 8 year old boy. He communicated quite well with eye gaze, expressions and gestures. God led us to begin the adoption process and 16 months later, we brought him home. Two years after adopting Ian, we again felt God leading us toward another adoption, this time through our local DCS. Jeremy and Lucas (ages 9 and 6) were in foster care and needed a forever home. They began visiting on weekends in March, 2011 and their adoption was final in August. Due to past trauma, neglect and abuse in their lives, Jeremy and Lucas have many challenges to overcome. God is using all our boys to grow us in ways we never would have imagined. Because of each of the boys’ unique and special needs, it has been difficult to find activities that we can all do as a family. A friend sent us a link to Victory Lane Camp and our interest was piqued when we realized that there were appropriate activities for all the boys but mostly the Christ-centered resources for the entire family."]
I still struggle so when things don't go the way I want. You would think that after countless times of God proving that His way is better, I would've learned. BUT no. I still fight back. I still desire my plan to be acknowledged and put into action.
That's how I feel about these last few months. If it was my plan, we would have a treatment for mom and she would be on the road to getting better. She was supposed to be done with treatment by July and then I would feel comfortable moving to Florida after that. BUT that wasn't God's plan. Now we are completely clueless as to a next step and totally unsure what the next few days look like let alone the next few weeks.
I also wish that I could have my plan when it came to support raising to work for Pioneers. I had the "perfect plan" in place. I sent out the first group of my support letters and then a week or two later I would start following up and calling my friends and family and sharing the vision behind what I will be doing with Pioneers. BUT once again, that was not God's plan. Less than a week after I sent out my support letters, my mom was in the hospital for over two weeks. Then as soon as she got out, I had to study for my nursing boards (WHICH I PASSED!!!!!). But that means that it has been over a month since I sent out my support letters and I am JUST now SLOWLY starting to follow up with families.
This is definitely not how I would've planned to do things. HOWEVER, I have seen time and time again that when I submit myself to God's plan instead of my own, it works out SO much better. When I step back and allow Him to work, He gets so much more glory and it works out best for me.
Oh, when will I learn? To just step back and let Him take control from the beginning.
May God get the glory and be shown completely through these next few weeks.
Would you pray for me in this time of support raising? It can be incredibly challenging to humble yourself enough to ask your family and friends to partner with you and support you. But I know that this is the road that God has me on and I cannot wait to see where He leads.
Today we cried.
The weight of moms illness is finally becoming a reality to us.
It is real that the doctors don't know what to do next and we are at a loss as well.
BUT it is also real that all these earthly doctors do not know ANYTHING compared to our Great Physician in Heaven.
He has this under control.
He knows.
He can heal her if He wants.
And if not,
He will still get the Glory.
Praise God!! That is what we will do FOREVER!
This is the text copy of an email my dad sent to our support system this morning.
Dear Ones - We met with the oncologist yesterday; Despite the fact that Carol is feeling better - the news from the scan was not good. The cancer even with the one chemo treatment is not retreating in fact some of the lymph nodes increased in size. This is just baffling to all the medical minds that are working together for us. This puts Carol in stage IV lymphoma.
Our next stop is Mayo Clinic in Rochester, MN. We have an appointment on May 27, 2014.
Due to medical travel restrictions it will take us about 3-4 days to get there and they do not recommend flying due to cabin pressure changes and the edema in Carol's legs. So we will have a great time - doing some tourist type things along the way :). I will miss graduation :(.
- Please be praying for
The medical staff as they compile all the records - we have to hand carry them to Mayo Safe travel and a time of refreshment as we spend time together on our journey to MN.
We praise God that our sorrow my last through the night BUT Joy comes in the MORNING!
"Come what may, I will follow you. Your gospel peace will see me through. On Sovereign Grace I will depend, to the end." -Abraham Cremeens
We are so thankful for our support system and we are praying to the God of miracles for a miracle for mom! :)
For You created my inmost being, you knit me together in my mothers womb. I praise You because I am fearfully and wonderfully made; your works are wonderful. I know that full well. Psalm 139: 13-14
The last few months, I have been thinking about this concept a lot. That we are all made in God's image and made perfectly because we were made by our perfect creator. If sin had not entered the world, we would all truly be perfect. There wouldn't be any sickness or crying or suffering or death. But, because of the fall and sin there is. Because we listened to the tempter and deceiver instead of our Savior, sin entered the world. And with sin came heartache, and death. BUT GOD, sent His son to redeem us from fear and sorrow of death. (For the wages of sin is death, but the gift of God is eternal life. -Romans 6:23) Through His son, we can have eternal life. What an incredible promise, that if we confess our sins, He is faithful and just to forgive us our sins and cleanse us from all unrighteousness!! (1 John 1:9)
Now, back to my first point, that we were all created perfectly in the image of our creator. (Genesis 1:27) God did not make a mistake when he created my mom knowing she would have lymphoma. He did not take a nap when he created me with my autoimmune disease and osteoarthritis. He knit me together in my mother's womb. He created me fearfully and wonderfully. He did not make a mistake, he did not mess up. He created us each with our unique "problems" and hardships, but they aren't mistakes. He created me this way and He created my mom this way so that He would get the ultimate amount of glory and praise on this earth. I wouldn't want anything less!!! What a blessing it is to know that I was uniquely thought of and perfectly made. You are too! We were all knit together PERFECTLY in our mother's wombs. God does not make mistakes.
So when you are discouraged or feeling anything less than perfectly made, remember that you are FEARFULLY and WONDERFULLY made. God made you with a purpose and HE will get the GLORY from your life. I love reciting this back to myself when I am sitting with mom watching her suffer through some nasty illness. That God loves her and He created her exactly how He needed her to be. I also relate this to some of the children I have the privilege of working with. God created them PERFECT. He loves them just the way they are and He created them in HIS image. It helps me to love them unconditionally when I know that I see my Savior in their eyes. He is getting so MUCH glory through their lives and that is an awesome awesome thing.
This is not always an easy thing for me to remember, especially when I have flare ups with my Crohns disease or I watch my mom sick in a hospital bed. However, I know that James says to "Count it all joy brothers, when you meet trials of various kinds, for you know that the testing of your faith produces steadfastness. And let steadfastness have its full effect, that you may be perfect and complete, lacking in nothing." (James 1:2-3)
What a beautiful day it will be in HEAVEN when we can enjoy the GLORY of the Lord with NO MORE pain, heartache, sickness, cancer, fear, or death. But until then, we will endure and we will rest on the promises of our Savior.
I praise my God today that because of Him we know these promises to be true:
you are loved.
you are unique.
you are beautiful.
you are needed.
you are worthy.
you are made for so much more.
you are WONDERFULLY MADE.
[Not only is all your affliction momentary, not only is all your affliction light in comparison to eternity and the glory there. But all of it is totally meaningful. Every millisecond of your pain, from the fallen nature or fallen man, every millisecond of your misery in the path of obedience is producing a peculiar glory you will get because of that.
I don’t care if it was cancer or criticism. I don’t care if it was slander or sickness. It wasn’t meaningless. It’s doing something! It’s not meaningless. Of course you can’t see what it’s doing. Don’t look to what is seen.
When your mom dies, when your kid dies, when you’ve got cancer at 40, when a car careens into the sidewalk and takes her out, don’t say, “That’s meaningless!” It’s not. It’s working for you an eternal weight of glory.
Therefore, therefore, do not lose heart. But take these truths and day by day focus on them. Preach them to yourself every morning. Get alone with God and preach his word into your mind until your heart sings with confidence that you are new and cared for.- John Piper Do Not Lose Heart]
Last Tuesday, April 8, I took mom to an appt with her oncologist. She was one week out of her first chemo treatment and not feeling very well, but we thought that was typical chemo illness. However, her oncologist said we needed to see her kidney doctor to be sure that everything was running smoothly since she was retaining a lot of fluid. By God's providence, her kidney doctor was able to see her an hour later and we got some blood work done. They sent us home after the blood work saying they would call with the results, a few hours later, I got a call from them saying that I needed to get mom to the hospital because her creatinine was 4.1 (normal is 0.7-1.2) and they needed to get that under control right away. (A creatinine of 4.1 is technically considered kidney failure) At this point, we were in shock and didn't know what exactly was happening.
The doctor explained that it was hard for them to know the exact reasoning for her failing kidneys. One explanation could be a problem called tumor lysis syndrome where essentially too many cancer cells were killed from the chemo, that the kidneys get overloaded with toxins and dead cells and they stop working because the can't handle it. If her condition was caused from this, IV fluids would help and potential short term dialysis could be needed. However, the other explanation that they were considering was that this was caused by her light chain deposition disease ( a very very rare disease that can attack organs and cause failure). If that was the case, then the damage is irreversible and she could be on permanent dialysis.
Unfortunately, without doing a kidney biopsy, there is no way for them to know which of these caused this sudden kidney failure.
So, her doctor decided to start her on fluids and see how her body would respond. The first night, she went from 4.1 to 3.8, which was a good start. The night after, it went down to 3.4. Because of this, her doctor said we could put off dialysis longer, but the numbers needed to get below 3 soon. The next day they went down to 3.1 but then after that went back up to 3.4.
And that is where we are at today. Because her numbers did not get below 3 and it has been over a week, her doctor is afraid she has plateaued and he is fairly sure that her light chain disease has caused the problem. Because of this, he has advised that we start dialysis soon. There are a few tests that they need to run before they start but then they are going to get her on it as soon as they can. In the short term, it really will help her to feel better and filter out the toxins and extra fluid that have been hanging out in her body since she started the chemo. However, there is still a lot of unknown in this because it is unsure whether she will ever come off the dialysis once she starts.
(*of course, there is a lot more medically going on than just these numbers and this little I have shared but for those who do not understand the medical jargon, I thought this was the easiest way to explain what we know right now...if you'd like to know more, feel free to message me and I can try to explain it better! :)) )
We had a good talk as a family though and we know that God is in control. This is no surprise to Him. We want whatever is best for mom and keeps her feeling the best she can. We are excited to one day be able to see the "big picture", we trust that the Lord has a reason for this time of suffering, and we are excited for Him to get the glory through all of this. We are thankful for the incredible nurses and doctors that we have and we are ready to learn this new "normal" that our life will be.
Thank you to everyone who has prayed for mom and our family. We also wanted to thank everyone that has tangibly showed us love whether by visiting mom, flowers, food, rides, etc etc. We feel so so loved and couldn't ask for a better support system.
It seems like this will be a long journey so please continue to keep us in your prayers. Praise God that He has worked it out so that most of us are home to help and it is almost summer so my dad will have time off to be able to spend more time with mom.
Finally, I wanted to share the words to one of mom's favorite songs these last few months. We listened and sang this together the night before she started chemo. We sang this together as a worship to the Lord and I know it plays in her heart everyday.
I come, God, I come I return to the Lord The one who’s broken The one who’s torn me apart You strike down to bind me up You say you do it all in love That I might know you in your suffering
Though you slay me Yet I will praise you Though you take from me I will bless your name Though you ruin me Still I will worship Sing a song to the one who’s all I need
My heart and flesh may fail The earth below give way But with my eyes, with my eyes I’ll see the Lord Lifted high on that day Behold, the Lamb that was slain And I’ll know every tear was worth it all
Though you slay me Yet I will praise you Though you take from me I will bless your name Though you ruin me Still I will worship Sing a song to the one who’s all I need
Though tonight I’m crying out Let this cup pass from me now You’re still more than I need You’re enough for me You’re enough for me
Though you slay me Yet I will praise you Though you take from me I will bless your name Though you ruin me Still I will worship Sing a song to the one who’s all I need Sing a song to the one who’s all I need
I wanted to be sure to update everyone on the new developments in my mom's cancer story.
Last year, my mom was diagnosed with Lymphoplasmacytic Lymphoma with light chain deposition disease. Those are really long words for a slow moving cancer of the blood. It is a very rare cancer and because it is slow moving, it is not an emergent situation but we need to get it taken care of before it attacks her organs. Essentially what is happening is that her body is producing too much protein and that is clogging up her organs reducing their ability to function correctly. After her first round of treatment last year (a very non toxic medication), a few of the infected lymph nodes decreased in size but generally the nodes stayed the same instead of getting better. Also, the protein production did not decrease.
Because of this, they have decided to do four months of actual chemotherapy to try to get rid of the rogue protein. If this round of chemo works, she should months, even years of relief from the rogue protein as well as her lymph nodes should reduce in size. Because this is cancer, this treatment is not a cure, however, it could give us a lot of time before we have to think about this again.
Obviously we wish that we didn't have to go through the next four months of chemo. But, we are so thankful that there is a lot of hope at the end of this valley we will be in. We have hope because we know this is not a surprise to God and He has a plan in all of this. It WILL be for our good and His glory no matter what and I am so thankful for that!
I have been reading in the Old Testament the last few months and God so perfectly worked out for me to read Deuteronomy and Joshua the last few weeks. The Lord chose Joshua to be the leader of Israel and to lead them in to the Promised Land. Before Moses died, he summoned Joshua and said to him, "BE STRONG AND COURAGEOUS, for you shall go with this people into the land that the Lord has sworn to their fathers to give them, and you shall put them in possession of it. IT IS THE LORD WHO GOES BEFORE YOU. He will be with you; HE WILL NOT LEAVE YOU OR FORSAKE YOU. Do NOT fear or be dismayed." (Deut. 31:7-8)
The minute I read these words, I knew I was supposed to read them for these next few months that we are going to be enduring as a family. We will continue to follow the Lord and we will be strong and courageous and He will be with us. He has promised that He has gone before us. He has conquered the grave through His Son and He will conquer the devil one day. I cannot wait for that day, but until then, we will remain faithful and we will cling to Him. I am so thankful for these promises and will cling to them in the weeks to come.
Please be praying that God will get the glory through this time and He will shine through our family. Pray for strength for my mom. We are thankful that when we are weak, then He is strong. She will need to rest in His strength these next few months. (How lucky she is to be able to cling to the strength of the Creator of the world in such a practical way these next few months!!)
Thank you for your support of my mom and our family. We are so blessed to have such an incredible support base and we don't take any of you for granted.
Oh how I love living my life in service to my Savior. He never ceases to amaze me. The past few months He has been leading me on a journey that I never expected but I am so excited about.
After alot of prayer and phone calls and emails, I am so thrilled to announce that I have accepted a job to work as a recruitment coordinator for a mission agency called Pioneers.
Pioneers' mission is to mobilize teams to glorify God among unreached peoples by initiating church-planting movements in partnership with local churches.
They are "an evangelical mission movement with 2,593 international members serving on 248 church-planting teams in 95 countries among 180 people groups in 100 languages.
For more than 35 years, Pioneers' passion has been to see God glorified among those who are physically and spiritually isolated from the gospel of Jesus Christ—from Muslim bedouins in the deserts of North Africa and animist villagers in the jungles of South America to secular humanists in Eastern Europe and middle-class Buddhist urbanites in the sprawling cities of East Asia."*
I feel extremely humbled that the Lord would allow me to be a part of a team whose goal is to facilitate workers to reach the ripe harvest around the world.
I know that there will be a lot of questions so I have tried to think of a few to help clarify as best I can.
1. What exactly will you be doing as a "recruitment coordinator"?
The main part of my job is connecting with people who are eager to be involved in missions and help them to not only recognize their role in reaching the nations but then to facilitate them following through with that.
2. Since it is a faith based organization, how is your job funded?
I will have to raise 100% of my support for this position. As daunting as this may seem, I am excited to offer my friends and family the opportunity to partner with me in bring God's name to the nations.
3. Where is the job located?
As much as I wish the job allowed me to stay in Lafayette. I will be moving to Orlando, Fl to join the mobilization team at Pioneers home office.
4. What about your nursing degree?
For the time being, I will not be using my nursing skills. I pray that the Lord will use this as a time to heal and prepare to potentially be healthy enough to go overseas and use my nursing as a avenue to share the gospel. However, there is a potential that I will be able to use my nursing knowledge to help facilitate medical missions overseas.
5. When will you be moving?
As soon as I am 100% funded and I pass my Nursing Boards I will move South. :) I am hoping to be fully funded by August 1. But that is a goal date and by no means a permanent date.
6. How can I be praying for you and/or what can I do to help in this time?
I need PRAYER. I need the body of Christ to remember me in prayer as I raise support and transition to life away from home. I also will be needing supporters, emotionally and financially. In the weeks to come I will have more information as to specific prayer requests and specific financial needs.
Thank you so much for your love and prayers for my life. I am really excited about this new opportunity that the Lord has literally laid in my lap and I look forward to seeing how He will continue to guide and lead me in the months to come.
