It’s March 1! 🙂

Just thought I’d chime in…it’s been a while! We are still continuing with daily therapy for Grace. She is continuing to show incremental signs of improvement, such as slowly regaining sensation in her left hand, her voice becoming stronger, and getting closer to being fully weight-bearing again. Praise God for how He is continuing to help Grace, and us, and continuing to show Himself faithful and powerful!

At the same time, I think it might be wise and necessary to point out the limitations which still exist. Mentally, Grace is doing well–to come out of two strokes and be where she is now, at about three months out, is amazing! Grace can hold a normal conversation, understand what people are saying, and generate her own thoughts and opinions, as we can clearly see from her own blog posts. So the mental processes are in place. However, at this point, Grace can’t talk or interact with people for very long, because that makes her exhausted and sometimes overwhelmed (unable to think, speak). She is also limited in the amount of information her brain can handle. Clinically, she is prone to periods of high levels of anxiety and stress. Triggers for these anxiety/panic attacks include: making decisions, changing plans, processing large amounts of information, and being in open-ended situations/situations without a clear plan or framework.

Grace does not feel this way all the time. There are times when she is her “normal” happy self, and then there are moments of anxiety/worry/stress. She is trying the best she can, she is trusting God and relying on Him…we are all continuing to trust Him. Thank you all for your continued prayers and care! We just wanted to let you all know that, while she is no longer hospitalized and is able to communicate via blog posts, she is still wheel-chair bound, without the full use of her left hand, experiencing nerve pain on the left side of her body, taking pain medication regularly, unable to work or go to school or church, and facing post-TBI (traumatic brain injury) and stroke related anxiety and stress.

The road is long but our Shepherd is faithful! This verse has been going around in my head recently:

“A cheerful heart is good medicine, but a crushed spirit dries up the bones.” – Proverbs 17:22.

I pray that God would grant all of us cheerful and joyful hearts…it’s not the healthy that need medicine, but the sick, the broken, the crushed. May God bind up our wounds and restore us by His grace, by His love and mercy. Praise God that as His children, His Spirit dwells in us and renews us each day. He has been and will continue to be worthy of all praise! To Him be the glory forever.