Storing up for winter

Eli’s health took a little nose dive this morning. Nobody’s exactly sure why that happened, but as I write this, he’s back to normal. For some reason, he had a short stint of poor oxygenation. As we visit with him this afternoon, he smiles at us, and is as active as ever.

We had a bit of a tough conversation with Eli’s cardiologist this afternoon. It’s sort of hard to explain without going into extreme details, but I’ll do the best I can. Eli’s next cardiac surgery is supposed to be the Glenn, in which they route his upper body return blood flow directly into his lungs instead of his heart. There are beginning to be slight concerns that this won’t be possible, due to the development of his lungs. The veins in the lungs have to be extremely free and non-scarred or calloused for the Glenn to be an option. Given the fights he’s had in his short life, both Eli’s cardiologist and cardiac surgeon are concerned this might not be the case with Eli. They will be testing for this before his surgery to verify.

Should his lungs show significant damage or incapability, the door to the Glenn becomes closed, and we would be forced into looking at other options. We aren’t heading down that path yet, so we don’t know what all those options are, but we do know that it will make our struggles to date seem rather trivial.

Please understand clearly: This isn’t the case. It’s a possibility. We were just made aware of the possibility that this could get ugly.

In addition, I’ve recently been hit with several stories of complete failure before growth. From completely different areas of my life have come stories of lives shattered and people giving up before greener and greater pastures. I have a lot of fear for the implications of these stories.

Please pray that Eli’s lungs are sufficient.
Please pray for an outpouring of miracle healing like we’ve never before seen.
Please pray for Tanya and I to be more disciplined in prayer.

I feel the need to remind myself what was written in November, 3 months before Eli was even born:

There are many things that create a foundation. One of the foundational pieces of our life is our understanding of how God works. God is in control of all. Everything that happens, therefore, is orchestrated by God. God does things for his own glory. Therefore, anything that happens, anything that is, was intended to bring glory to God. Regardless of how terrible, unfair or just plain pointless something may look as you're facing it, its grand scheme value is in the glorification of God.

This is why we continue to live.