Learning a New Song

First, it was the beautiful and wonderful proposal by my now-husband, Nate. 🙂 Then it was the heart-wrenching shock of my fifteen-year-old brother, Joseph, being diagnosed with Leukemia (cancer of the blood). After that came months of mixed emotions: joy and pain, fulfillment and love in relationships with hurt in the suffering of my little brother and family.

Then decisions had to be made.

-Do we have a wedding even if Joseph can’t come? (He is staying in a different city getting treatment.)

-Do we continue on when we don’t know when the transplant will come?

-How do we make plans around the wedding knowing I may need to go to Memphis at any time to be Joseph’s bone marrow donor for the transplant?

Up and down it went with tides of emotion sweeping me this way and that. Yet, underneath, there was a Rock, a Foundation that didn’t move. His Hand was there in every moment to hold me and to still my desperate thoughts. Looking back, its clear that every moment was guided carefully by an All-Knowing and Loving Shepherd.

Joseph graciously understood when Nate and I decided to have the wedding before Joseph could be there in person. He was even able to join in through video calling on the internet. The transplant was postponed till mid-January, giving Nate and I time to honeymoon and even unpack at the new house.

And now, sitting here , hundreds of miles from my old home and family, with life so strange and different, I wonder how I am still tempted to doubt my Great Heavenly Friend. He fights for me. All the change of moving and marriage and Joseph on the slow road of recovery is the gift of a new song. It’s an old truth of God’s faithfulness sung in a new way, different than any other I’ve ever known, but the same Changeless God. It’s the song of my life -Praise to our God, who is worthy!

The stem cells and plasma I donated for Joseph’s bone Marrow Transplant.

“He has put a new song in my mouth -Praise to our God; many will see it and fear, and will trust in the Lord.” -Psalm 40:3

(Joseph had a very aggressive kind of Leukemia which the doctors felt, if killed, would simply come back. The doctors decided to do a bone marrow transplant with my stem cells so that Joseph has a higher chance of his body staying cancer free.)