It's Time to Dance

Friends, family, loved ones. Your prayers and encouraging words and deeds are humbling and felt so close to our hearts. I feel at times like our family is at the tip of a spear being thrust at the enemy and you are all the shaft of the spear. I would like to start off by saying I love each and every blog comment, facebook mention, text message, email and whatever other way we hear from you all. They are refreshing to my mind and soul and remind me how utterly NOT alone we are in this. This is good because the enemy likes to try and isolate us and pick us off one by one. Please keep them coming, especially tomorrow. Thank you to the prayer warriors that visited with me and Brinley today and were able to pray over her. That was awesome!

Brinley had a good day again. She's gaining weight, which is good! She still has a lot of secretions but they're clear so at this point they just make her uncomfortable until they can get sucked away. She was started on steroids to help any swelling go down before tomorrow's procedure.

So yeah, tomorrow is the big day we've been praying towards, when Brinley will be checked by the ENT specialist and have a procedure of some sort done to help her with having a stable airway. This could go several ways and we are just praying for our little girl to be healed. I was chatting with God today and my prayer was this (probably slightly paraphrased):

"God, the uttermost desire of my heart is that Brinley would be healed completely of all abnormalities and the doctors would be amazed. Nevertheless, not my will but yours be done."

This was a very hard prayer for me to say to God and I wanted to stop after "amazed" but ultimately I don't want this to be just Christian rote, I want to mean it: God, even if Brinley is not healed miraculously and this is a long hard road for her and us I will still love and trust You and know that you will turn sorrow into joy. 

You turned my wailing into dancing;

you removed my sackcloth and clothed me with joy,

that my heart may sing your praises and not be silent.

Lord my God, I will praise you forever.  -Psalm 30:5

I've done my wailing, now it's time to dance. There may be more wailing yet to come but that just means more dancing too. 

We love you all! Remember to pray for tomorrow and to send texts, post comments, flood facebook and annoy all your friends with posts about Brinley, anything to mobilize more and more prayer warriors! If I don't respond, don't worry, I love reading all of it and I'm probably just busy. Let's praise God together and make sure He gets all the glory. I'm sure I've forgotten things but that's what happens when my wife doesn't proofread my writing (she's sleeping right now). 

Brinley Mid-Yawn

Edit: my wife woke up and told me I forgot to mention that today is her 1 week birthday! Also, tomorrow is her original due date so maybe God will do a miracle and we'll get to bring her home :)