Restoration
Hey Friends and Family, Ya'll have been on my heart and mind often these past two weeks. I seriously cannot thank you enough for all you do to make our mission here possible, from giving, to praying, to skyping us, to visiting my family when my sister was in the hospital. You are incredible. James and I know we are blessed to have each of you in our lives. Thank you for all you do for us and the people here at Alive Church in Ireland.
Kenzie's Hospital Stay
This past week my sister, Mackenzie, who has special needs including epilepsy, began experiencing just a burst of uncontrolled seizure activity. She was pretty much having a seizure every 10-15 minutes, causing her to not be able to sleep. When they tried her usual round of emergency medications to stop her seizures they didn't work this time. This resulted in her ending up in the hospital with a lot of medical staff, along with my parents, trying to figure out what to do next.
James and I were finding out about this pretty much as it was happening. For our family, these moments of Kenzie's seizures getting out of control aren't uncommon but also aren't something we relish, especially when it lands her in the hospital. I had started off pretty calm, cool and collected about the whole thing, even once I had heard she was in the hospital. But after the neurologists tried a new medicine and it failed to work on Monday I was starting to get a little more desperate.
On Tuesday, I texted a few close friends back home to let them know about the situation and they immediately jumped in to pray, take care of my family for us, and visit them. When worry and fear started to grab hold about not being present with our family, they became our hands and feet for us, doing what we wanted to be doing at the time but could not do. By the end of Tuesday another new drug had been introduced and yet the seizures had continued to persist, and this was pretty much new territory. In the past, for the most part once Kenzie was in the hospital they were able to get the seizures under control after a few hours and it had been 48 hours at that point.
& the goodness of God
During this James and I were both praying like crazy and asked a few women who are gifted in intercessory here at our church to be praying with us. It was Wednesday, things hadn't really begun to look up and I was just talking to God about this and all of a sudden there was this line from a worship song I had sung a lot back in college being sung over me. It wasn't something that I remembered all of a sudden, it wasn't a song I had in my heart even, but I literally felt like the gap between Heaven and Earth had gotten a little bit thinner and I could feel God singing it over me.
The line was "you bring restoration to my soul."
Restoration, it happened to be the word he had spoken over my 2016 since the start of January. When I was reading the bible, doing a bible study, or praying it was the word I kept coming back to. Little did I know at the time, that a few short weeks into January He would be singing it over me at a time my soul needed some restoration and reassurance, but He knew. It was Zephaniah 3:17 in live action,
For the Lord your God is living among you. He is a mighty savior. He will take delight in you with gladness. With his love, he will calm all your fears. He will rejoice over you with joyful songs."
Thursday morning I woke up and got a call first thing from one of our Irish mommas here. She told me they had been praying for Kenzie and she woke up feeling like today there would be improvement. And that's exactly what happened, they had introduced a new drug into her system later on Wednesday night and it began working giving her a full 5 hours of sleep uninterrupted by seizures for the first time in days.
Kenzie was released from the hospital on Thursday, has continued to have no seizures since then, and every one has caught up on much needed sleep. It was nothing short of a miraculous turn around.
Just a friendly reminder
I say all of that to fill you in on how Kenzie is doing and everything that happened. More importantly though I wanted to remind you of a God who is here among us, living inside of us. He adores you and he is in the details, working things for good, even when you can't see it yet. He is a God who when things get bad, doesn't back off, hide, or go away but is right there in the midst of it all calming our fears and singing over us. He's a good God, whether your 2016 has started off a little shaky or has been nice and steady, he is good. You can trust him with this year, he won't let you down.
New Modern Day Video!
In other news, one of the organizations we work with as missionaries, Modern Day, has begun compiling video resources for missionaries preparing to go on the mission field. The videos are done by missionaries currently doing ministry and they are incredible. We had the honor of getting to create one of the videos. So here's the video!
[embed]https://vimeo.com/150738492[/embed]