Before I share the text messages between father and son, I need to set the stage for one of the comments. Our family is reading Not a Fan by Kyle Ideman out loud together at the dinner table each night. The premise of the book is to highlight the biblical difference between a true follower and a fan. It has been a great book to ponder as a family because being a true follower is quite the challenge to live out daily. Each chapter ends with a real person's testimony of choosing to really follow Christ and be more than a fair-weather fan. Each testimony ends with that person's admission: My name is Jacob Carter, and I am not a fan.

 Father: I was moved at your witness of Christ to those guys on Facebook. I believe it also revealed how lost they are. You also got to enter into the fellowship of suffering with Christ. How precious it is to identify with Jesus.

Son:  They were laughing at me at lunch today. It was embarrassing! Everyone was like “what the heck?” But I rejoice because God was mocked and laughed at, so that means they didn’t hurt me. They only helped me look like Christ even more!

Father:  Awesome! This is so good, Jesus said happy are you when people insult you and persecute you because you are MY FOLLOWERS! Matt 5:11 – you are not a fan. J

How glad I am that a father can find his words when a mother can't.

How good it feels when being proud of your boy-soldier is what finally tames the mama bear inside.

In August of 2000 Noelle became very ill. Since then our family has been through much graver illnesses like Non-Hodgkin's lymphoma and kidney failure with a subsequent transplant. I have been the care-giver for two transplant patients, since then — two! 

Me — the one who dropped mom off at the periodontist's office for gum surgery and then picked her up two hours later and promptly fainted dead away just listening to the doctor tell my mom with her slightly swollen jowls not to swish because it might disrupt the stitches.

Since then, I have given countless shots to Mike, three of which were mistakenly with an IV gauge needle (oops!), pulled raw skin away from a port with medical tape on a daily basis, and unstopped drains that were clogged with hair that fell out in clumps. Not to mention vomit duty, and all without fainting or even a squeemish stomach.  We do what we must when we're surviving.



This week life has been busy and trying, and I'm sure it's no accident I stumbled upon this story I wrote as an email to ask for prayer for my kids eleven years ago when Noelle was two.

Once upon a time in a time and land much like our own, a beautiful baby girl was born to a very proud mommy and daddy. Mommy and Daddy, overjoyed with this perfect gift from God, enthusiastically began to meet her every need: 2:00 am feedings, diaper changes galore, Tylenol for fever, an occasional antibiotic for an ear infection, many hours in a rocking chair with lots of singing ....

And every night before bed, Mommy would pray, "Thank you, God, for your good and perfect gift to us; thank you for keeping her healthy and strong. Bless her as she sleeps and grows (you grow during sleep, you know that?) into a beautiful young woman that will come to know you and love you and serve you. Cover our home with your perfect peace and protection tonight, preparing us for all that will come tomorrow. Amen."

Then Daddy would pray, "I plead the blood of Christ over my daughter, our house, our cars, our possessions, and our family."

As the baby girl grew into toddlerhood, she added her prayer to her parents', "For this day. For Mommy. For Daddy, For toys, for [insert everything she could think of here]. Jesus' name, AAAA--Mmeeeeeeen!"

Then one day, the little girl got sick. Mommy rushed her to the emergency room (twice) where they ruled out leukemia and meningitis (Whew!), but found that she had pneumonia. A bit of antibiotic and back to living happily ever after. But two weeks later, the fever returned, peaking at 105.4. This was cause for admitting baby girl to the hospital. Four days later it was determined that she had a whopping sinus infection and a severe kidney infection. 

Further tests, which involved 2 1/2 hours of begging a recently-potty-trained two-year-old to pee on the X-ray table to no avail, detected renal reflux caused by anatomical deformities. It seems her urinary apparatus did not develop into the finely-tuned machinery God created it to be. But being the courageous young heroine she was, her body had quietly and persistently made a gallant effort to overcome this disadvantage all by herself since before she was born.

Had she continued to barely win the battle alone, she would have developed kidney failure. In fact her urologist was surprised that her kidneys were not already damaged.

Feeling better after 5 consecutive days of Rocephin injections

But God sent pneumonia, 105.4 fever, and a bad sinus infection to protect her from kidney damage and impending kidney failure. In the middle of the night, in a chair beside a hospital bed much too large  for a two-year-old, the mommy found herself praising God for things like pneumonia, emergency room trips, and scary-high fever. She realized God's provision had shown up in things rarely recognized as "from God." She even thanked God that her baby was losing the fight on her own. (Who is ever thankful for losing?)

She remembered two and a half years of nightly prayers for health, growth (she was off the bottom of the growth chart since three months of age without explanation), and protection. She thanked God for answering her prayers with, "No." 

She repented for praying things just because that's what one is supposed to pray for. She asked God to give her faith to believe He is always at work, even if she was unaware, as she usually was. She asked God for faith to respond with worship and gratitude for things He is silently orchestrating in His perfect wisdom that may not look on the surface like gifts of grace.

The family will face extended medical treatment, not only for the little girl, but also for her brother and sister because this condition is hereditary. So in "real time" the family hasn't lived happily ever after yet, but is trusting in God's blessing and promise that they will. -- The End.

I've learned this week that stories are much more entertaining when they are not our own personal experience. But I have been effected by living this story in ways that watching it on TV or reading it in a book never could. I praise God for the work he's doing in Noelle and in the lives of our whole family. Please continue to pray for us as we seek God's healing in Noelle's body and perhaps Adrian and Reagan as well. They have a 40% chance of having the same condition. We are praying that God will bring glory unto himself in every aspect of this trial and complete his work in us through it. (written August, 2000)

It appears I was already gaining the fortitude when Noelle was a baby to withstand dire medical diagnoses and treatments without fainting. There was no way I could have known back then that God was preparing me to nurse and comfort my husband and guide my young children through their dad's cancer.

With hindsight I see that God was up to more than I knew at the time. That renews my strength this week when I've grown weary. It's good to see growth and remember that God is at work even in the midst of trial. That's encouraging and I definitely prefer it over fainting in the dentist's office any day.

Preparing to launch her first book, Grace for the Good Girl, Emily Freeman posted a few Jeff Foxworthy-ish statements that grabbed me by the earlobes and said, "Hello! I'm talkin' to you!" This book has already changed me, and I haven't even read it yet. But not in the way you probably think.

You know you're a good girl if you put "Make a to-do list" on your to-do list.

Bulls eye.

"You might be a good girl if" statements started showing up daily for about a week and each pinned me with a dart to the heart into the center of the boundaries, and I learned something new about myself. Not that I'm a good girl — I knew that long ago.

But that I have been desperate to raise good girls.

I have two.



And for the most part they are, but that other part? Yeah, I've gathered a few gray hairs over that small part. The good girl in me is obsessing over the parts of my girls that boldly go where I never went.

I've got to let it go:

• uncage these girls to know God's grace more intimately than my restrictions and expectations.
• foster the desire to please God above all others.
• release them to the reckless abandon they seem bent to that I know little of.

I mostly walked the straight and narrow because of fear. I was compliant — not from love, but from fear of consequences, fear of the unknown, fear of angry discipline and the let-down in their eyes.

I don't see this in my daughters.

Instead I see daring, wide-open, unhinged desire to take on life without reservation. Yet that has not stopped me from trying to mold them into my image.

All these years I've thought that giving them a good-girl take on life would set them free:

• from possible regret.
• from possible failure.
• from a whole host of things I've never been willing to risk, even though they might possibly turn out great. 

But my daughters aren't good girls; they're brave hearts. And I think I'm wrong to saddle these courageous girls with my cautious approach to life. They live in a different age, perhaps one in which caution will not serve them as well as their daring will.

I don't need to read this book for me. Rather, I'll read this book looking for the way a good girl raises daughters that are bent toward courage.



Tomorrow, we three will take our copy of Grace for the Good Girl and head to Charlotte for a day of shopping, then stop in on the author at the nest. Maybe these two chick-a-dees can teach their mother-hen a thing or two about adventure and flying fee into unfamiliar places. 

I drive in to the office and see the flags from the federal building and the Veterans Affairs Administration Building that flank both sides of my car just like I do each morning. Red, White, and Blue sentinels unfurl in the cool breeze of morning at full mast today, and I feel relief.

Remembering is our duty and desire. But when I am severely stricken, words just don't come. When tragedy forces us down under its dark and dusty crush, my instinct is to listen and not speak.

So yesterday I watched horrific images again and heard sorrowful reflections on that day in silence, just as stunned as a decade ago. Tears are all that escaped me — again.  A decade has not helped me make sense of this day.


Could it be because we were not created for death and destruction? That God placed us here in a Garden to commune with him eternally? We are alien and stranger to these things of this Fallen Earth; sorrow and despair speak a language I don't speak.

So today, September 12th, our duty to keep tragedy company behind us, I fill with relief and a desire to speak my native tongue. I let gratitude be the familiar words that guide me back to the place of Hope, Rescue, and Relief.

It was Wednesday night and that meant zig-zaging back and forth across town to get to church on time. Adding three kids to the back seat and one to the passenger side was only the beginning.

There was a conversation going on between two in the back seat. A third had ear buds in. My son sitting shotgun was having a hard time plugging his cell phone into the dashboard because he was distracted with telling me about his AP English teacher and how he rocks the whole world. (Thank you, Jesus, for answered prayer. Amen.) I was listening and glancing over occasionally so he'd know how intrigued I am that Mr. McWilliams understands him. I'm also navigating 5:00 traffic. Can anyone say multi-tasking?


We did the same thing on the way home, only this time in the dark. Adrian was still excited about his English class, and wants to finish the story he had started several hours previously. He gave me all the details and set the stage for what he was about to show me. 

They had read aloud from an anthology textbook in class that day. This is not a textbook he can take home, but he thinks the writing was amazing. He doesn't agree with the author's contentions necessarily, but, oh, the writing is just so amazing that he doesn't think he will be able to sleep tonight. Even in class he thinks of me, the only other person he knows who loves words like that. He just has to share them with me, so he takes careful pictures — five of them in succession so as to capture the entire selection.


While he was pulling out his phone and calling up pictures to read the piece to me, a new song started on the radio. Three teenie-bopper girls in the backseat began to bop. And sing. 


With abandon.


 (Go ahead and hit play on the embedded video below for the same effect we felt in the car while you read the rest of my story.)

  {Warning: If you click on the last two pictures and zoom in, it will give you goose bumps.}