Coming Home
After 35 days in the hospital over a 45-day span, Jeremy is coming home today!
We praise God for His faithfulness in Jeremy's life and in the life of our family. He has a new liver, and we are still pondering all the events that unfolded over the last month and a half.
All I can think of is the song, “Show Me Your Face,” by Steffany Gretzinger, and the lyrics:
Show me Your face, Lord
Your power and Your grace
Your power and grace.
I will make it to the end
If I can just see Your face.
And the part of the Exodus story where Moses commands a portion of the manna to be preserved for future generations to see and to know how the Lord led the people through the Red Sea, through the wilderness, and provided for them each day.
"Moses said, “This is what the Lord has commanded: ‘Let an omer of it be kept throughout your generations, so that they may see the bread with which I fed you in the wilderness, when I brought you out of the land of Egypt.’” And Moses said to Aaron, “Take a jar, and put an omer of manna in it, and place it before the Lord to be kept throughout your generations.” As the Lord commanded Moses, so Aaron placed it before the testimony to be kept. The people of Israel ate the manna forty years, till they came to a habitable land. They ate the manna till they came to the border of the land of Canaan. (An omer is the tenth part of an ephah.)" —Exodus 16
This same omer of manna was eventually placed in the ark of the covenant to be kept for even more generations to see how the Lord provided (Hebrews 9:4).
Since I was a teenager, right after I read how Elisabeth Elliot calls her journals an "omer of manna," I have written at the beginning of my journals, "An Omer of Manna"—a record of His faithfulness and a reminder that each event is something to be kept for the future generations to remember. I may eventually start an online blog again and move some of these writings to that website. Maybe I will continue to document there and keep an omer of manna for our girls to read and for their children and children's children to see how the Lord leads His people and provides for us through the most unusual of circumstances each day. Even when we don't have a clue as to what He's doing or why He's moving us how He is, we can trust Him and follow Him.
His grace, our sustenance.
His glory, our reward.
His presence, our manna.
Each day, given.
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Prayers for our future days:
Jeremy (and I) will have clinic visits twice a week now where he will have his numbers checked and meds altered. This will be to check on any signs of rejection and help mitigate this risk. We will do this for at least 3 months, then prayerfully this will drop to once a week until 6 months post-surgery. He will be on anti-rejection and immunosuppressant meds the rest of his life.
Please pray for him as he comes out of the fog of a long hospital stay and welcomes the fall, Alabama weather as he regains strength and continues to heal.
Pray for our family as we pray through "what's next" while waiting on the Lord to provide and show us even through a healing and rebuilding season—a glorious unfolding.
Praise God with us as we thank Him for all His good gifts—even the unwanted gifts He chose for us. There's a simplicity to life when we can fully not understand or want what's happening while simultaneously and confidently knowing whatever happens is for our good and for His glory and we can trust our Father. I can only say I know this because of the ways my grandfathers, father, and Jeremy have loved and cared for my girls and me, and for the ways the Lord used our past experiences to engrave His goodness into our hearts. I get in my own way sometimes as I resist His control and question if He really knows best. But I find that resting and abiding always ends in a better posture. And I want this for my girls as well—an omer of manna to be kept for future generations.
We love you all truly and dearly. We praise God each time we think of you and how you all have held up our arms, reminded us of who God is in your life, brought the lanterns to our dark paths, and carried us at times when we had nothing left. For some of you who knew the path of suffering so well, I've told people how it felt like we were placed in the deep dark woods and many of you showed up with lanterns. And then some of you who had been there before showed up and said, "I don't know where your path will lead but I do know a clearing over here where we can see the distance and gain perspective. Remember what He revealed in the light is still true in the dark." And you all held out the light until we could regain some footing to move again.
We couldn't have made it through this season without you all. I need to document the many many ways you all have allowed the Lord to use you in this season. What a beautiful Bride He has! Thank you doesn't seem quite adequate. We love you all.