Good Works

Thank you everyone for praying this week for Alice’s stomach pain/nausea. It is a trail-and-error process right now of tweaking her diet and getting her on a good schedule with her medications at home… but the last couple of days and nights have been much better than what we experienced over the weekend. And our girl who has ALWAYS fought any kind of medicine, is now willing to take the ones that are helping her the most right now. We are SO thankful! 

And if you wake up between 10:30pm-Midnight any night… pray for Alice, that is typically the time her pain starts to get really bad at night, so we are most likely up with her then. 

Also, her next chemo is this Friday morning at 10am TX time – for those of you wanting to pray during her treatment. 🙂

———————————
While I have you here… I wanted to share this with you too…  

I mentioned in an earlier post about having spent time in the book of Ephesians the days leading up to Alice’s diagnosis, and because of that, I had journal pages full of promises that God has made to us – promises that I have been able to pour over and rest in over the last month. 

One of the promises that keeps bouncing around my head and filling my heart is this:

Ephesians 2:10 “For we are his workmanship, created in Christ Jesus for good works, which God prepared beforehand, that we should walk in them.”

When this all started… and as we’ve been moving through it… I’ve been in a little bit of denial about what a big deal this is. I mean, I know it’s a big deal… but I still thought that after a few weeks, we’d figure out a routine, we’d make this our “normal” and then we’d get back to our regular life, commitments, schedule, etc. 

But every day that goes by… every day that looks completely different and unexpected… every day that has things that were not planned by me… makes me realize that I have to completely let go of everything else. Let go of even the smallest commitments that seem like they should be easy. Things that even feel a little embarrassing… “she can’t even do THAT right now?”… is a thought that I assume others are thinking and I have to fight it off… 

The best way I have to fight off those kinds of thoughts… of failure, of incompetence, of “another mom would be handling this better”… and on and on… is by remembering the promises that God has made to me… promises that are not up to me to fulfill… but rather have already been fulfilled through Jesus. 

For I am his workmanship, created in Christ Jesus for good works

(a few of my “good works” right now are…calling Doctors, waiting at the pharmacy for prescriptions, holding hair back while she is sick, measuring medications, tracking her diet, praying, crying, letting others pray for me… changing diapers, singing songs, loving my other two babies, laughing at Rob’s jokes, finding beauty in the broken…), 

which God prepared beforehand

(for ME… these good works he chose for me to walk in… they aren’t the works I would have chosen for myself, but he chose them for me… and they are good), 

that we should walk in them
(just walk… one step at a time… one tear at a time… one phone call at a time… one prayer at a time…). 

I encourage you to use this verse for the trial you are walking through. Reflect on how it is a beautiful thing to walk in the path that God has set before you. Rest in the fact that this trial is not about how you perform through it, it’s about the fact that God prepared it for you (He’s not thinking he should have given the task to someone else, someone who would have done it better – he gave it to you – and declared that good). Our good work is simply to rest in Him and let Him see our hearts… whatever is in them right now. 

Thank you again for loving us… 
Marissa