Discovering YOU Magazine June 2018 Issue | Page 11

FEATURED ARTICLE

my girl, my love, my life.

Today, my daughter is back in school, playing with her friends, and relearning. Jesus used people to heal, uses us to be His hands and feet. I pray daily. I pray without ceasing, sometimes I forget the pain. We forget when things are okay, and we are working, working, working, what tragedy can do. How we forget, but when tragedy comes, how He loves us and, in a moment, life changes. We are still healing, all of us, but I can say I am grateful to be a mom, to catch a breath, to look at the sky, and know God loves all of us. As we are, He know us, and all our mom guilt and shame. Our prayers were answered with His most precious gift of life, when He gave us, Josh and I, our kids. I love them. I love her, my girl. God gives us gifts. Children. My babies.

I am grateful for the helps. I am grateful for the people that came by, gave us paper plates, gave us groceries. People who gave us some light in our tunnel. My greatest hope is that more people reach out in times of despair to help. Call the state senators for districts in your community and ask for changes to Children's Special Health. It is a Medicaid funded program. Approval and grants are needed for continued nursing care for kids, and ongoing care for kids with special needs. Ongoing meaning long term. I am grateful, and it was a miracle to be a nurse for my child, however, not every family is as lucky. When the agency told me, there was no processing time for the service to get approved, that was very scary to me. If the hospital could release my child to me, what if something happened to me, the nurse

My husband would have had to move my daughter. Please call for change in the programs for Children with Long term Needs. There were previous grants in place to ensure care upon discharge for kids with respiratory failure and trach vent kids to ensure care. Other families struggle to go home when care is not in place, the child remains hospitalized ongoing. Not knowing when you will be unable to go home is terrifying. Pray for people in the hospital with their kids, effects of the ICU do last long after going home. People who are being healed do not always heal in one day.

If you have the opportunity to be involved in a positive change for others, do it, do the dance, breathe in the ocean. Change for the better. Call for Jesus, call on God, read the good book, don't say your fears out loud. Tell God, He will make a way, and open your eyes to His plan. He loves to show His unconditional magic love, His unlimited refills as Samantha says. He just walks right over to our empty cup when we feel there is not a drop left and refills the milk. How weak is the Devil when they offer up their worldly answers, their diagnosis, their unlimited non-potential. The devil is the author of all illness, disease, and death. God is the author of live, life everlasting, life eternal and favor. Pray for favor in your darkest places, He will show others the light through your pain. He did with me, when I felt like I was swallowed by a whale, in the belly of a pit. He pulled me and my girl through it, out of that place, out of Intensive Care, out of Rehab, out of not knowing.