I’d like to start by thanking all of you who have continued to care about and pray for our family during these months of online silence. When I decided to take a social media sabbatical almost a year ago, I never could have imagined how long it would last or how many challenges our family would face during that time. These months have been a dizzying roller coaster ride filled with both great joys and great difficulties.
First and foremost, Noah is doing AMAZINGLY well. He is thriving and is more stable than he has been in years. We feel like we are watching a clock turn backwards as he has regained lost skills and returned to the greater stability he had as he was younger - it’s like watching his disease REgress instead of PROgress. There are really and truly no words to describe the joy that this is bringing to our entire family. It is like Christmas every day.
While he is not completely without medical needs/challenges, he is almost a completely different child from a medical perspective. It’s really mind boggling and we are overwhelmed with gratitude every day. He’s walked an extremely difficult road to get to this point but every struggle has been so, so worth it! One day I will share more of the details of how he’s gotten to where he is, but I feel like that is a story for another post.
Right now the how is not as important as the what - Noah is happy and thriving and stable. The last few weeks in particular have seen him progressing in staggering leaps and bounds physically, socially, emotionally, and academically. We are cheering him on with every step forward and asking for your prayers that the Lord would keep this momentum going!!
The rest of the family is also doing well. Jeff’s been at his new job for almost a year and absolutely loves it. The kids are thriving in so many ways and we’re having a wonderful homeschool year so far!
The rest of this blog post feels a bit trickier to write. Electronic media is seldom the best way to convey nuances of meaning and emotion, and it’s important to me that my heart be heard here. Please read with a filter of grace and with trust that my intentions are kind and loving.
We have gone through some extremely deep waters as a family in the last 10 months. In these difficult times, we’ve been blessed to know that many of you have been praying for us without knowing any details, and if you are in that group of people, we’d ask that you continue to do exactly that - please keep praying for us. God knows the details.
We’ve also been blessed by two other groups of people. The first group is made up of our “in person” family and friends as well as our community. These people have prayed with and for us and been the physical hands and feet of Christ in our lives and their support has been truly invaluable.
The last group could best be described as “friends of friends.” These are the people who have been privy to some or all of the details because our family and friends have shared with them in person. The distinctive here is that while we have not been in personal contact them, they are essentially one degree removed - they’ve connected with the people with whom we’ve connected and have gotten prayer requests from our friends and family.
All three groups share one thing in common - the support they’ve given us has been old-fashioned support without the use of social media. In this day and age, it seems to be increasingly common to air every personal issue all over the internet, but we believe that not every difficulty needs to become internet drama. While social media can be (and has been for us) invaluable in many ways, there is also a time and a place for old fashioned communication and support. We feel that this is one of those times.
As a result, we lovingly ask that you remain the role in which you’ve been throughout this. If you’ve lovingly prayed and trusted God to know the details, please continue to do so. Your prayers have surely sustained us and we are very thankful for all of you.
If we’ve been connecting over coffee, around the table, at church, on the phone, etc., please keep your communication with us to these personal, off-line situations. I know it can be easy to chat online, but we’d ask you to refrain from doing so. What we’ve been doing has worked incredibly well and we value our relationships with you so much - we love you!
If you’ve been praying for us as a “friend of a friend,” we again ask that you not change a thing. If a church member, friend, co-worker, etc. has been updating prayer requests for you, please continue to get your prayer requests in that way. We know there are a lot of you in this situation and you are such a blessing to us!
All of this is a pretty long way of saying that we have not been discussing the details of our current challenges online, and at this time we do not intend to do so. While I can understand that my silence has been very frustrating for some, please know the decision to step back for awhile was prayerfully made by Jeff and I as we considered the best interests of our family. The love poured out on our family has been very healing and we are grateful for every one of you and would love for you to continue to engage with us online going forward, respecting the fact that we will not discuss the past 11 months online until we are ready to do so.
I will continue to update here, but because Noah is so stable right now, I don’t anticipate updating often. You can expect to see me update once a month or so at this point so please don’t worry if you don’t see something for a couple of weeks. If I’m on the quiet side, it’s because he’s still doing so amazingly well!!!!
Blessings,
Kate
