Do you think we are mother and daughter?
Thank you for all your prayers, Victoria is doing very well. The chicken pox did not progress beyond the 4 spots, and it did not progress beyond Victoria! Hallelujah, praise the Lord.
Victoria was excited to be back at school on Tuesday, with here friends and beautiful teacher. On the way home from chemo yesterday she said, "Mum, I just love school." Victoria's blood count was high enough yesterday for her to have chemo, and she has enough platelets to go riding to day. Yippee.
If you have been following our journey for a while you will know that we have a huge number of people who support our family in many different ways. One place we receive a lot of support from is the local church that we belong to. In the media the church often gets very bad press, and understandably so for some of the events that have occurred. However, there is another side to the church, a loving, caring, supportive side, that doesn't seem to get very much press at all. In fact I can't remember the last time I read a positive article about the church in the newspaper or watched a news item on tv. So here is something positive about being a part of a church family....
When it became evident to me in June that I was struggling emotionally with the weekly visits to the hospital, I shared my feelings with a couple of close friends. One of whom is a member of the church we attend. Within a couple of weeks the church had assigned someone to help give me and our family the extra practical support we needed to make it through the last few months of this round of chemo.
I was finding it harder and harder to go to the hospital each week with a positive attitude. I was just plain tired of it all. I did not want my negative attitude to "rub off" on Victoria or Alexandra, as they both looked forward to the hospital visits. 13 months on, they still skip down the hospital corridors saying hello to everyone! Praise God. I decided I needed someone with me to share the load, Ken had to work. He was not an option. My immediate family all live in NZ. They were not an option. So our church family stepped in and filled the gap. Our church has set up a roster of people to come up to the hospital with us on Thursdays, which means I can often go and have a quiet lunch by myself, not having to rush back to the treatment room.
Another area in which we were desperately needing additional support was our marriage. Marriage can be difficult enough sometimes, without the added pressures of having a seriously ill child. Ken and I have been very much in survival mode for the past 2.5 years, and now as Victoria's treatment is coming to an end, we thought it was time to start to reconnect as a couple and start to re-build our marriage as we move into this next phase of this long journey. But our problem was getting time alone! With four children and running our own business, there is always someone or something that needs attention! Once again our church family has stepped into fill this gap, organizing a babysitting roster for each Saturday night for the next few months. Ken and I had our first date night last Saturday night. The date only lasted an hour as we were simply exhausted, but it was great to get out and actually be able to finish a conversation without being interrupted!
So I hope you can see that being a part of a church family has been such a blessing to our family. Our church family has filled the gaps in our lives many times. The church is not perfect, but it can be a very loving and caring organisation that does it very best to show Christ's love. Our family is a testimony of that love.
This is love; not that we loved God, but that he loved us and sent his Son as an atoning sacrifice for our sins. Dear friends, since God so loved us, we also ought to love one another. No one has ever seen God; but if we love one another, God lives in us and his love is made complete it us. 1 John 4:10-12
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