God Is Good - No Matter What

-

Sorry for my absence from the blogosphere (like any of you actually read this anyway). We’ve had a family emergency.

My father-in-law went to the hospital two weeks ago for a blood clot in his leg. Little did we know what was going to happen.

Monday afternoon Tim gets a call at work that his dad would be having a blood clot removed from his lungs. Things went crazy, and next thing we knew we were in the hospital hearing a doctor telling us that Duane was a very “lucky” man. He had a huge blockage in his pulmonary artery, which should have killed him. The surgery to remove the clot was a full open-heart procedure, with the need to open the chest cavity and all. As the days progressed we learned that the surgeon, who has been working for 28 years, only has had two patients survive this condition. God miraculously saved my father in law’s life.

For the next 10 days Duane was on life support. After the first 24 hours we felt confident he would survive, but it was slow going. However, today I am happy to report that he is off oxygen, walking (short distances) on his own, and completely mentally healthy. No signs of stroke or long-term damage.

Our family received a miracle. We keep saying how good God is (and he is). A very close friend mentioned the first night that this surgery/condition is what killed her father when she was a child. Duane should have died.

Yes, God is good, and we are thankful. However, I have been contemplating saying “God is good.” Is God good because he spared Duane’s life? Yes. But would He have been good had he taken Duane to heaven? It’s not so easy to say yes to that. I have another friend who is trying to adopt her foster child, and the courts are pushing for the child to go back to the birth mother. It is painful to watch. I am sure it is even more painful to experience. Yet, God is good.

Why do I believe that? God is not good because of the things He does. God is good because of who He is. Because of His character, His omniscience, His being. God is good simply because He is God.

But I am thankful for our miracle. We love Grandpa Harms!

Comments

Post a Comment

Popular posts from this blog

My Story Begins

-
Image
I am participating in a really fun project that is the brainchild of my friend Janna, who regularly blogs at The Adventure of Motherhood . Her project, entitled Mommy's Piggy Tales , encourages moms to blog about their childhood in 15 weeks. Here is the button if you want to learn more or consider joining. My dad, my mom, and me. My daughter, N, has that quilt now. Every year for Christmas my brother and I received our very own holiday ornament. Starting with the “Baby’s First Christmas” ornament, these ornaments usually reflected something we accomplished or did during the soon-to-be-past year. For example, the year I got my driver’s license, my ornament was Daffy Duck in a shiny new car. Every year we enjoyed putting “our” ornaments on the tree. It was a wonderful time to reflect back over our lives and the memories we had made. Sometimes we asked the reason behind the ornament, and learned a little more about our histories. When I married, I got a box with my ornaments in it to ...
Read more

Preschool: Life Changing Years

-
Image
I have been thinking since last week about what to write when it comes to preschool. I am participating in a fun project put on by my friend Janna at Mommy's Piggy Tales. Check it out! There are so many options. I could write about my imaginary friend, Polk-a-Roo, who I was actually a little afraid of. I could write about losing my favorite My-Little-Pony, Firefly, in the sandbox when some mean boys buried it at preschool. I could write about my only child, only grandchild years before my brother came along. I could write about my first “best friend,” the girl across the street (Klaire), who I sobbed over when it was time to move away. I could write about all of those things, but the truth is my preschool years are some of the most important of my life. See, my parents wanted me to be a “good person.” To reach that goal, they started going to church. Not long after they started attending church, something happened that would change the course of my life forever. My parents, throug...
Read more

Christmas Miracle

-
Image
Natalie was hamming it up for Tim the other night. Well, a lot has been going on in the past two months. About a month or so after the miscarriage, I was noticing something wasn't quite as it should be. I took a pregnancy test, and it came back positive. That was strange to me, because we were trying to prevent that as requested by the doctor. They called me in for blood work, and everything was indicating that I was pregnant. I was quite confused, as you can probably imagine. Two weeks ago we went in to have an ultrasound. That was eight weeks after the miscarriage. In that ultrasound they found what appeared to be a baby developing at 5 weeks gestation. We were quite perplexed, of course, because in our minds it should be about 8 weeks. The doctor asked us to come back today because at 7 weeks they should be able to see a heartbeat. The doctor said there was a good chance that there were just leftovers in there because of the earlier miscarriage, but that my numbers (hormone leve...
Read more