Wow. Eight years ago if you had told me that this is where my life would be, I don’t think I would have believed you. BUT… if someone had told me that this would be my life, and I had a choice to make a decision and NOT marry Matt, so that this would not be the path of my life, I STILL would have married him. 
September 12,2003 was an amazing day in my life. 8 years later I STILL have guests from our wedding come up to us and say how fun our wedding was. We were SO excited to be getting married. We were young. (I was just a baby at 21 yrs old!!) We were completely crazy (and still are) and we were in LOVE!!!! I loved matt so much, and the good news is that I still do. I would say that the first 7 years of our marriage were completely ‘normal,’ we had a baby and then another through adoption (maybe adoption isn’t normal to you… but it is to me 
) We bought a house, and then another when we needed a bigger home. Matt got a real job, I realized how much I hated having a job so stopped working 
I later decided having my own business was more suited to me, and that worked out pretty good. And so on and so forth was our first 7 years.
And then there is this last year. My life in the last year consisted of moving your family across the world, learning a new language and culture, being robbed, having a forest fire invade our yard, and having to put that fire out by hand because there was no ’911,’ (truth be told… Matt and a couple other guys put the fire out, while I stood in the house deciding what I needed to toss in the car in case the fire engulfed our home.) living without electricity or clean water, caring for a very sick orphan newborn who only slept 30 minutes at a time and screamed in pain the rest of the time, we were forced to leave our new home on the other side of the world to come back to the states to find out our daughter has cancer. We realized we had no home, no car, no job, no nothing, to have to rely on others to care and provide for us, we had our very sick child stop talking and stop walking, we bought a new home 5 months later, and moved into our home and realized that EVERYTHING was broken in it. You guys can relate to that right?? No? anybody?? no. hmmm…. But you know who can relate to all that stuff with me?? My amazing wonderful husband. If I had not had him along on this crazy life journey with me, I don’t know what I would have done. Now, I have a huge faith and find great comfort in the Lord, but there are days when the good Lord would use Matt’s amazing patience to just be there for me when i’m freaking out about medications and side effects, and things left in Tanzania and dishwashers that don’t work. And yes, I am real good at freaken out. Our life is hard. I mean really hard. But together Matt and I have become better people through it all and I really wouldn’t trade it for a normal un-eventful life. I’m sure that you all have issues in your life, struggles that stink. And it is my prayer that not only do you find strength in the Lord to get through those hard days, but also that you have someone that can hold your hand through it all. Some times we just have to reach out for help, but getting through all that ‘stuff’ will be so much better with someone who cares.
On Anniversary this year is not going to be fun. It won’t be exciting. We will do nothing special. But we will be together, and again I am thankful for that. Lola has a big appt at clinic tomorrow. I’m thankful that Matt is taking the morning off work to help me out with Lola. She has to be sedated in order to have chemo put into her spine. While I have gotten used to her being put under, it is never an easy thing to watch my baby go life-less on the table in the basement of the hospital. And it is never easy to watch her wake up confused, tired and hungry. So I am thankful that matt will be there to help me with our sweet baby girl. Lola will also be getting a number of other Chemos, and they will be upping her doses. The night after clinic is never real fun for Lola. She generally doesn’t feel real great and ends up with bad diarrhea during the night. And I am always so emotionally drained that it takes everything I have to take care of my sweet babe. Clinic days are not fun. So that will be our 8th anniversary. A prime example of what marriage should be. Caring for each other, loving our family, and helping each other when we need it most. So Matthew, the Love of my life. Here’s to our 9th year. We survived the 8th year so we now know we can get through anything together, and i’m pretty sure it can only go up from here.
Please keep praying for our family, as we continue to survive the best we can. Pray for Lola at clinic in the morning. Pray that her blood counts look good, so she can get the treatment she needs. Pray that as they up the doses of chemo once again that the side effects are minimal. Pray for NO long term side effects for Lola. Did you know that 3 out 5 children with cancer live with long term side effects for the rest of their lives?!! I’m not real interested in that for Lola. She still has a lot to do with her life. We don’t want side effects slowing her down. Wanna know something cute about Lola? Well… if you said no, I can’t hear you so I’m still going to tell you.
A few nights ago I had tucked the girls in for bed and I was listening them discuss the star they could see out the window, and they decided to ‘wish’ on the star. Lola says the whole star light, start bright etc… and do you know what she wished for??? A ‘double blessing of the Holy Spirit.’ My 5 year old. She is 5 yrs old and THAT is what she wishes for!!! And then last night… stars out again and this time she wished for ‘Grace, Peace and Mercy for people around the world.’ Did I mention that she is 5 yrs old?? This child is AMAZING. God has big plans for this little angle. She is going to take her double blessing and do amazing things.
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