Update 12/22/09 Day 44

Dear friends,

I'm afraid I've been a bit circumspect with you. In order to protect my children from possible disappointment, I have kept mostly to myself the fact that STEPHEN CAME HOME TODAY FROM SUNNYVIEW! I sobbed my head off from the elevators to the parking lot, thinking of my experiences there, beginning on November 18 when my baby girl arrived on a stretcher with no emotion and a subdural hemorrhage, and my husband was still in the surgical ICU at Albany Med. I thought of all the kindness shown to me over those brutal weeks, when you came and visited and brought food and cleaned my bathrooms and so much more... I thought of the joy on that Saturday when Hannah began to come around. I thought of the first day when Stephen could not even stand for 1 second. I thought how the road behind was something I would never have thought I could have survived, and how the road ahead is daunting still. But I have hope. Beautiful, wonderful, hope in a God who never fails and a future that will surely be difficult but where victory is assured. I remember the day I recalled the scripture in Colossians 2 "And having disarmed the powers and authorities, he made a public spectacle of them, triumphing over them by the cross." Friends, when we all get through this thing we'll see how the darkness was disarmed by love, and how the powers and authorities of the enemy of our souls was made into a public spectacle, with the cross triumphant. Amen and amen.

So the man is home, in time for Christmas! It's not a traditional Christmas (remember Thanksgiving?), but it is a precious one. I don't feel at all normal, I'm very tired, and I can't hold a thought in my head for more than one nano second, but my whole family is here. David was surprised to see his Daddy home and both of them hugged and cried, so then I cried and it was a virtual sob fest. But so what. I couldn't care less. I think I'm giving up mascara for the foreseeable future.

Now some of the day to day tough stuff really begins. Doctor appointments (lots of in and out of the car), picking up medicines, overcoming insurance hurdles, home wound care, home therapy. Then in a few weeks the plan is to go back to Sunnyview a few days a week for outpatient therapy with home care by me only. I have no idea how to do this thing. The Great One has helped me thus far, and so He will continue. That is my only guarantee.

I have to keep it short tonite, because I've got to get some sleep. And there will be someone in the bed next to me...Someone who is alive 44 days after the worst night of my life. Linus was just on the tube telling the Christmas story in his inimitable way. Holding his blanket and looking adorably "shepherdy", he says what I want to shout from the rafters: Glory to God in the highest, and on earth peace, good will toward men". His good will toward me has been outlandish. Spectacular. Divine. Wow.

That's what Christmas is all about, Charlie Brown.

I love you all and really wish we could all be together somehow. So glad heaven will be all about that...Thank you for being true friends through the good, the bad and the ugly.

Your friend on the pilgrim road,

Loriann