Hi all, long time no see! Thanks as always for your continued love, prayers, and support. Since VCS had the week off, I thought I’d write a bit this time. Grace and I are still battling her seizures. We are continuing to work with her doctor to find a medication that’s a good fit and will prevent these seizures from happening. Just as a reference point, Grace has had 37 seizures in the past two weeks. She’s starting to experience severe muscle pain in her neck and shoulders from all the tension her body sustains during her seizures. She’s still essentially house-bound, as it is far too risky to venture out and have seven back-to-back seizures (or more).

To continue the war analogy, we are still in the trenches. It’s hard to tell when we’ll negotiate a “peace treaty,” but we sure hope we’ll be able to do that soon. As Grace’s husband, it is agonizing for me to sit and watch her when she’s having these seizures, because I am powerless to stop them from happening. It’s even harder to watch her battle to keep moving forward one day at a time, with no guarantee of when this will end.

But it is in times like these that we cling to God. The darker the trial, the more brightly His grace shines. The heavier the burden, the more deeply felt is His presence and sustenance.

We all need oxygen to breathe, and most of us do so without giving a second thought. But it’s not until someone is reliant on a respirator to stay alive that every breath is recognized as a precious gift. So it is with God’s grace. We are lost without it, and most of us fall very short of thanking God for lavishing it on us daily. But perhaps when life hits us hard, our eyes are opened and we are presented with the opportunity to thank Him for His love. When we give thanks, we experience God’s love more richly.

“Therefore we do not give up. Even though our outer person is being destroyed, our inner person is being renewed day by day. For our momentary light affliction is producing for us an absolutely incomparable eternal weight of glory. So we do not focus on what is seen, but on what is unseen. For what is seen is temporary, but what is unseen is eternal.” (2 Corinthians 4:16-18)

Earthly trials sure don’t seem “light” and “momentary” while we go through them, but eternity is a very, very long time…thank God for inviting us to be with Him during all that time! To Him be all the glory and honor, because He deserves it.