Praising and Petitioning...

...and celebrating!

Let's talk about the celebration first.   Dad turned 69 years old yesterday; and although he said we could just forget about his birthday, we didn't listen very well.  :)  Our low-key celebration included lunch here after our church service with our out-of-town guests Steve, Claire, James, and Brielle, plus some in-town guests, Richard and Virginia Weaver and Gordon Zook (from our church).  It was a fun time of being together, enjoying each other's company, and honoring Dad.  Last year, I wrote a special top ten for him; and this year, I went back and read through that post.  All of those ten things are still true!  :)

In honor of the birthday boy, here's a picture of him and his family when he really was a boy.  He's the handsome one on the far left.  :)

On to the praise...  Last Thursday, while I was vacuuming, I had crouched down to reach the baseboards; and either while I was still fully crouched or just when I started to stand up, something happened to my left knee--the inside of it twisted, knotted, tore, or something terrible like that--and I had the worst knee pain of my life.  I literally dropped the vacuum and half-stood, half-fell against the wall, trying desperately for it (whatever it was) to release and ease the pain.  I just knew I had done something awful to it; and besides the pain (which was gradually lessening but was still present), I felt a lot of fear about what would need to be done to fix my knee.  My thoughts jumped to doctors' appointments and surgery and recuperation and therapy, but I thought, "This isn't really a good time for all of that!!"  My mother has had surgery on both of her knees--one knee when I was in college and the other one when I was pregnant with Tobin--and although I love to imitate her example in many ways, this isn't one of them!  

As it turns out, Dad came up the hill from the office to check my knee, he advised wearing a knee brace and giving it some time to see how things went with it, I started wearing an old knee brace that I had hung on to since high school days (when I wore it while playing basketball), I wore it the rest of that day but not that night (and had quite a bit of pain during the night), I wore it the next day, but then decided to stop wearing it because it was so tight that it was hindering the circulation in that leg and my ankle was starting to swell and hurt.  

Here is the praise part: my knee is getting better!  I was so convinced that I had ruined something inside my knee that I was sure I would need outside assistance to heal, but I prayed a lot about it and amazingly, it's getting better on its own without further medical consultation.  I am SO GRATEFUL for this!  It's still a little sore; and if I bend it too far too fast, it hurts; but overall, it's a hundred times better than it was.  I'm really hopeful that it will fully recover; and for that, I give glory to God, the maker and healer of knees!!!

Now for the petition...  Last Wednesday, the day before the knee incident, David came to me and said, "Mommy, there's a lump on my neck."  I felt where he was showing me; and sure enough, there is a lump on the left side of the back of his neck.  On Thursday, Dad felt it and was a bit puzzled because it's not a normal place for a lymph node (which was my first thought, that maybe it was just a swollen lymph node from David's recent cold or some other infection).  We decided to wait out the weekend and then decide this week what to do about it, so yesterday Dad said that we should take David to Dr. Alexiou, one of our local Ear/Nose/Throat doctors for further consultation.  Because today is a holiday, we haven't gotten that appointment scheduled yet; but I'm quite eager to get David seen and to know what the next step is.  Any time the word "lump" comes up in conjunction with a human body, the "c" word isn't far behind.  I'm not really worried (yet) that it's cancer, but I'll rest easier when we know some solid information.

Right now, I'm petitioning heaven that, if it's His will, the lump will disappear...or we will find out that it's something completely benign...or, if a harder path awaits us, that we will walk forward, full of faith and covered by His mercy.