Immeasurably More Than We Ask Or Imagine

Wednesday, July 15, 2015

The page is worn.
Familiar, comforting and poignant are the words.
A million emotions today, coming across them again in my quiet time as I remember back to the moment years ago where they first jumped off the page to grip my heart with hope.  The verses in my bible are frantically underlined and marked up with “Evangeline 2008” scratched in the margin by a mother desperately needing a lifeline to cling to in a seemingly sinking ship in the early days of Evie’s unstable little life.

For this reason I kneel before the Father…..I pray that our of his glorious riches he may strengthen you with power through his Spirit in your inner being so that Christ may dwell in your hearts through faith.  And I pray that you, being rooted and established in love, may have power to grasp how wide and long and high and deep is the love of Christ, and to know this love that surpasses knowledge – that you may be filled to the measure of all the fulness of God.  Now to him who is able to do immeasurably more than all we ask or imagine….to him be glory!!”

God has unarguably done more than we could ever have asked or imagined and answered exceeding abundantly, our prayers for our daughter.  There is a tenderness to her heart and love for Jesus that is grasped I believe, proportionally because of all she has endured.

After a conversation recently about heaven when my grandmother died, we had touched on the points of God taking away all pain and giving us new, whole, healthy bodies when we go to live with Him.  Almost disappointedly she asked “but will I not have my scar anymore? I want to keep my scar.  It means God fixed my heart and I like it”.  She knows her life is a testimony to the divine touch of Christ and His intervention and healing of her little body and she has a story to tell. She has come home school more than once this year and expressed her frustration that “the other first graders are too busy and they don’t want to sit and listen to me tell them about Jesus”.  C and I laugh with the mental image of Evie trying to line up 20 kids on the playground and get them to listen to her, but all humor aside, this has been our prayer.  Her name means “evangelist” and it has been our prayer since the day she was born, (before we ever knew what her story would be) that she would share the message of Christ and that His perfect peace would be her story of grace to a world needing to know Him.

This week we embark on a journey of a lifetime!
Evie has generously been granted a dream come true through Make A Wish – an organization devoted to making wishes come true for children who have life-threatening illnesses.  We praise God for a good visit with Evie’s cardiology team last week in Charleston.  As we visited with one of our favorite nurses she teared…she loves our girl!  7 years ago, she was on the floor and the charge nurse designated to caring for Evie often.  She now teaches new nurses being trained at the teaching hospital.  She told us she uses Evies story with each training she does for the new nurses because she is such a miracle!  She marvels with us at a story that has overcome so many odds and shares the positive outcome and drastic measures taken to save a life and prefaces it as a “happy ending” to a tragic medical drama that she wants her nurses to know how to prepare for.

We were encouraged by reports from her doctor that she is receiving great care through her cardiologist in Thailand and he was impressed with their notes and that they are taking all precautions and monitoring everything he would like to have assessed.  Only God could have brought us to a place of peace and provision for her being seen and monitored away from the States.  God has been so faithful to meet us every step of the way with the care and supervision that she needs.  We continued to watch and wait as we see things that will likely need further intervention as she grows and develops.  Her heart is functioning in a way it wasn’t designed to and the cardiac function begins to be compromised as her body grows and matures but today…..today she is good.  She is a happy, healthy, imaginative, passionate, beautiful 7 year old and we give thanks and CELEBRATE today!!

Make a wish beautiful dreamer!!

 

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