A year ago today was Roslyn’s first full day at home after her bladder surgery; today, she is back in for Round Two as we keep trying to get her bladder to a healthy place.

I don’t want to do this.

I can’t even say how much I don’t want to do this.

Kathryn is still recovering from her surgery last month, and Scott and I are still just too tired. But here we go anyway. This was the prayer of our hearts as we left our kids again (for at least 2 weeks this time), and drove through heavy traffic to Cincinnati Children’s Hospital:

“Heavenly Father, we need strength for the day that is before us. You alone can give us what we need. You are our refuge and our strength — a very present help in times of trouble. You have promised to be with us, and to strengthen us. You have said that as our days are, so shall our strength be; and that your grace is sufficient for us. We accept these assurances, believing that we shall obtain help from You for every duty and every struggle  this day. We ask You for grace to perform our allotted tasks with diligence, and in all our ways to acknowledge You. Take all the tangled threads of our lives in Your own hand, and unravel them, weaving them into a web of beauty.”
~J.R. Miller (1840-1912), Family Prayers 

We are so blessed, once again, by people who have lined up meals for our kids while we are gone, and for friends and family who will be running errands and shuttling kids to work and appointments, and to our daughter and son-in-law, Greg and Kristie, who will move into our home today with their eight kids and care for everyone there.

Unfortunately, the home construction projects didn’t finish before we got to this point as we had hoped, but volunteers gave up their past two Saturdays to get it all to a point where we can pause for this two-week period and focus on the children’s needs. As soon as we get home, we will all jump back in and try to get it all finished by the end of October.

We would cherish your prayers for exactly the words of the prayer above. We can fret and point to this and that solution to our stress, but it all really does come down to resting in God’s sovereignty as He orders our steps each day, and to trusting Him to give us what we need as we function on very empty tanks. We want to believe Him when He promises to fill us with all that we need to follow Him.

Please pray for Kathryn who did not want us to leave her this morning; our other children who weren’t ready for us to be gone again, either; and for Roslyn. She still has fresh memories of how hard this surgery is, and this one is actually even harder than the one she had last year. She is nervous, but such a brave little girl.

We have discussed splitting up for this one so that one of us could stay at the hospital and one could go back and forth for the times when we are both needed at the hospital. But we have learned that the back-and-forth is actually even harder for Kathryn. She seems to do best if we just settle into a new, although temporary, normal as a routine is set up at home and we all push through to get this behind us. But it’s hard for everyone, no matter how we do it.

We will post updates as we move through these next couple of weeks. Roslyn will undergo two days of not-fun bowel prep today and tomorrow, and then surgery is scheduled for 7:30 Thursday morning.

Below is a picture of our brave girl this morning before we left the house, as she posed with her new doll that dear friends sent to her as a surgery gift. She smiled for us, but there was a lot of anxiety coursing through her little body.

“Blessed are those whose strength is in You, in whose heart are the highways to Zion. As they go through the Valley of Baca, they make it a place of springs; the early rain also covers it with pools. They go from strength to strength…”
Psalm 84: 5-7

“As your days so shall your strength be.”
Deuteronomy 33:25