Nov
24
Written by:
Julie Arduini
11/24/2009 11:00 PM
This picture means so much to me. It sure isn't because I look smokin' hot, wow look at that hair!
Anyway, this was our youngest's baby dedication. Only a month before, Thanksgiving Eve, she was in the Pediatric Intensive Care Unit in Rochester, NY. When we raced her to our local hospital she was gray with a shallow pulse. A nurse just happened to walk by, see her, and casually ask if we saw the Today Show that morning with the babies dying of the flu?
Yes lady, I saw it.
Another nurse looked at us as we pushed through the doors to join her.
"You need to know this might not end with you taking her home, but planning her funeral."
I stand thankful because I knew when she was in the womb that God promised she was an overcomer. I never thought how much that would be tested but I stood on that promise against overwhelming odds.
That baby is now six.
I'm also thankful for this picture because it's the last family picture I have with my dad. It was weeks after this he let my sister and I know he was diagnosed with lung cancer. I'm thankful to have survived those years because all those experiences happened simultaneously.
We're now in a place with stability and wellness. I'll never take that for granted and I'll never be silent. If you're going through hard, unbearable, unspeakable crisis, it is not a cruel joke where you are the punch line. It's a refining fire to mold you into the image of God's Son.
I'm thankful for Thanksgiving Eve...2009.
How about you?
