We’ve been home from California not quite a week.  To say we’re “back to normal” is a bit of a misnomer.  We’re still reeling from the travel, jet lag, and general life changes that come with a big surgery for our super hero.  The trip went great.  We had a hiccup of a stomach bug that hit Emmie the morning after she was discharged but aside from that small scare, she sailed through surgery and recovery like the amazing super hero she is.

Today at breakfast, Malachi said, “Emmie is brave.  Like really brave.  She was brave all through surgery and flying.  She’s brave.”  Yes.  Yes, dear son and so are you.  

While we were away our hearts were overwhelmed with love for all our super siblings at home.  I don’t think I worried for a second about how they were doing.  They were fed well (and they told us all about it) by our church family who brought meals the week they were at our home with grandparents.  They informed me, “We have dessert at EVERY meal!” They were loved.  Oh so loved, by our church family and regular family.  

The kids spent the first week with Papa and Grandmere and then traveled to Alabama and spent the weekend with my sister, Aunt Yaya and her family.  After that, they traveled back to Georgia to hang with Ge and Granddaddy until we arrived late Thursday evening.  

Aunt Yaya panicked that we would flip at the amount of tv and junk food they ate.  Nope.  No worries…aunts and uncles should spoil nieces and nephews.  And really, I didn’t care what they ate.  The most important thing to me was that they were loved.  And they were oh so loved.  

We sometimes have a time of “two petals and a thorn” during family worship.  Usually after a fun family day or trip or even a really, really hard day, we’ll go around and everyone names two things they enjoyed about the day (two petals) and one hard thing about the day (the thorn).  One of the kids told us that their two petals and thorn were, “You were gone. You were gone.  You were gone.”  They had so much fun with family!  That warmed my heart so much.

Tobin spent the night before surgery with our sweet dear “framily” who lived not too far from Stanford.  How precious that my sweet T was loved and cared for and ya’ll, he was spoiled too! I didn’t have to worry about him that whole day.

If our kids away from us weren’t loved enough…then there was surgery day.  I woke up at dark thirty and saw notification upon notification on facebook and texts and instagram.  Over and over people saying they were praying.  Sweet beautiful videos of our god-daughter praying that made me laugh and cry all at once and brought a sweet smile to Emmie’s face.  Wishes and prayers and shares from all over the world that God would keep His ever-loving hand on our precious girl and us. 

Before our feet ever touched the airport, even, God provided wonderful and loving financial support for us.  We were able to raise more than what we had budgeted in a matter of days and continued to receiving loving support through Amazon purchases and even more funds.  We didn’t have to worry the whole trip about whether we had enough money.  The money we didn’t spend will go towards her trip in six months.  She’ll have another MRI/angiogram/perfusion study to see if the surgery worked (20% chance that it won’t…so good odds). 

I guess what I’m trying to say, through all of this is that we are so grateful.  Words are not adequate to express the love and care we have felt from everyone who has prayed, given, fed….well, loved, us.  We love you all so much and can never really tell you all enough how much your love means to all of us.  It’s really overwhelming and I’ll have moments when I realize that God has provided and loved on us through real tangible people and by growing and stretching our faith…once again.