Time is Flying By: A Long Overdue Update

Whew!  The last time I blogged was in August 2011!!  This season has been one of the busiest and hardest of our life... running a close second is the first 6 months of marriage.  But that is another story for another time!  I could have never guessed what God had in store for us last August, but now as we continue to press on we see all the amazing ways that our Lord has prepared us for our journey.

September happened like September normal happens...and we finished our normal September with an unexpected visit to the hospital that wound up being 8 days long! Our sweet girl was so sick and the doctors could figure out what was wrong.  After several days we were able to consult with a GI who decided to to a colonoscopy and endoscopy to see what was going on inside our girl.  Finally a diagnosis.  Ulcerative Colitis.  It's funny the peace that comes with giving something a name.  I remember that feeling well, just like with our little Mr.(if you're wondering what that is all about you can read about it here), just having a place to move forward from feels amazing when you have living in a place of mystery! Fortunately there was no mystery from God's perspective, and even in that hard place we had this awesome transcends understanding kind of peace... and a history.  God had provided all that we had needed to get through a hard time before, and He was sure to do it again!

I wrote this on my white board the day before we took sis to the hospital...

So the next few months in a nut shell...

• We went totally vegan the first week of October. It's been an amazing journey... and I am so thankful to have my husband totally on board!  Being a man isn't defined by the number of bloody steaks you consume in a life time!!
• In November I went on an AMAZING trip to Guatemala to encourage some beautiful sisters in Christ.
• Sister had a relapse and symptoms started returning the weeks before Christmas. Our GI continued to insist that diet changes wouldn't work in helping to change symptoms or in healing colitis... Huge red flag went up for me... Our food going in doesn't change the way it comes out?? That sounded like it was defying logic!
• I prayerfully started reading books on naturally healing Chron's and Colitis, all the while meds and steroids increased.
• Mr started to have migraines because of his shunt :o( Seems to be about once a month when it gets to throw up intensity.
• We got some hard news about what next steps the GI wanted to take with Sister's treatment.

So picking up our...saga... in February... We consulted with a Naturopath.  After all the things I had been reading and had been prayerfully considering we felt called to take a leap of faith and work towards getting our girl of medications. Clearly they weren't working and we definitely weren't comfortable with the GI's next steps. Logic says that what we put in our bodies will impact our organs and body function. And even on the vegan diet I knew in my gut that something else was bothering Sister's little body. We LOVE our NMD and have continued learning so much through our time with her.  A recent allergy test revealed a lot!  So now we are working diligently on her rotation diet and have moved to vegan, gluten, and corn free!!  I am doing more and more raw "uncooking" and we are now about 80% raw.  The best part about all of this is that eating this way is 100% healthy for all of us!

Keeping track of the rotation diet...

At the Arizona Wild Life Zoo and Aquarium with Great Grammies and Grandpa

We are so thankful for our family.  They have been so supportive!  We had our first vegan Thanksgiving and Christmas... and all of our meat eating family blessed us by enjoying our vegan fare! Though my dad says that he'd be a starving vegan, we were blessed to have our Easter dinner at Pita Jungle (where he could eat chicken :o).  Sister scarfed up some serious tofu!! 
We are so thankful to our friends for checking in on us. For blessing me with much needed phone calls and emails and texts reminding me of God's faithfulness.  On the hardest days they have been there when I needed to cry or didn't really know what to do next.  We are so blessed to have an awesome church family that have been so faithful to lift our girl up in prayer. And my Guatemala sisterhood... I know that God has blessed those friendships in my life for just these times!  I feel SO blessed to have these women praying for our family.

Posing for a pic with Baxter at the D-Backs game.

All this thankfulness to say that GOD IS SO GOOD!!  And He is SO FAITHFUL!!  Right now we remain at his mercy as we are learning so much about trusting and obeying.   We don't know when God's timing for healing our girl will be, be we see daily the benefits of learning to eat holy.  As hard as it is for a little 6 year old to have such a hard diet, we see how God is blessing her with strength and encouragement from so many to continue on.  In the last few weeks we have seen so many wonderful things happening... Sister's energy continues to increase- back to being a normal active 6 year old, we're decreasing meds, Mr is liking all the foods he is eating and enjoying his occasional cheese cheats with Daddy on golf days, and we are nearly at the end our our first homeschool year looking forward to a break before we start first grade in June.  I am confident that God will keep us at the edge of our seats moving forward!  But I know that He'll be there with us too!



Psalm 16

  Keep me safe, my God,
for in you I take refuge.

  I say to the LORD, “You are my Lord;
apart from you I have no good thing.”
I say of the holy people who are in the land,
“They are the noble ones in whom is all my delight.”
Those who run after other gods will suffer more and more.
I will not pour out libations of blood to such gods
or take up their names on my lips.

 LORD, you alone are my portion and my cup;
you make my lot secure.
The boundary lines have fallen for me in pleasant places;
surely I have a delightful inheritance.
I will praise the LORD, who counsels me;
even at night my heart instructs me.
I keep my eyes always on the LORD.
With him at my right hand, I will not be shaken.

 Therefore my heart is glad and my tongue rejoices;
my body also will rest secure,
because you will not abandon me to the realm of the dead,
nor will you let your faithful one see decay.
You make known to me the path of life;
you will fill me with joy in your presence,
with eternal pleasures at your right hand.