My sister, Carrie, sent me the book Fearless by Max Lucado which I highly recommend.  My journal is full of notes from the book and I’m not even close to finished with it yet.  While I was skimming through it the other day, my eye caught a quote that I want to share.  With Ryan’s next surgery scheduled in just three short weeks, I have been busy making phone calls to get everything set up, moved around, rescheduled, organized.  I’ve been quite consumed with it all but there has been so much to do I really haven’t had a choice.  Then yesterday in the mail we got a familiar envelope from the neurosurgeon with a bottle of chlorhexidine in it which is the soap we have to use the night before surgery to wash Ryan’s hair.  And it all became so very real. This quote is from Admiral James Stockdale who was a Vietnam POW for 8 years.

I never lost faith in the end of the story, I never doubted not only that I would get out, but also that I would prevail in the end and turn the experience into the defining event of my life, which in retrospect, I would not trade.

Max Lucado goes on to say that real courage embraces the twin realities of current difficulty and ultimate triumph.  Yes, life stinks.  But it won’t forever…….Everything will work out in the end.  If it’s not working out, it’s not the end.

I know this next part of our journey is simply just that – only one part.  There are so many other chapters of our book, lots of places to go, memories to make, laughter to share, people to meet.  And I am confident that even when we face these difficult moments when I simply am unable to stop the tears from falling because my heart hurts so very much knowing how difficult things are going to be in three weeks, it’s not the end of the story.  God has seen us through so much, He certainly will be with us in the coming weeks. 

I couldn’t agree more with what Sheila Walsh said in her book Beautiful Things Happen When a Woman Trusts God ~  All I have to offer anyone else is a life surrendered to Christ so that His beauty and grace shine through my brokenness.