I spent the day with my father. He is still sedated, and they will keep him that way another day or so. There were some good improvements in his blood work and other labs and his vitals are stable. That is all wonderful news. But he is battling pneumonia, and that seems to be his biggest issue. The doctor said we will know more over the next couple of days.

It’s hard to watch someone you love go through something like this. You feel helpless and at moments very alone. While I hate that he got so bad he needed to be transferred to the ICU, I am thankful he is there. The nurses and doctors have been wonderful, and unlike when he has been on the regular floor, I haven’t had to fight for him. They anticipate his needs and keep such a good eye on him.

These past few days have been rough, but thank you to so many of you for reaching out, visiting at the hospital, and sending us messages. We are grateful for you in our lives.

I’m not sure what tomorrow holds, and I’m not sure I’m ready for it, but God is still good and He is still sovereign. I will trust in Him.

To Christ be the glory.

“I looked at her and it was like the thought had dawned on me for the first time: That’s where I’m heading… where we’re all heading.

“That sobering thought alone was enough to remind me of the stakes involved in life. To be confronted with suffering, whether observing it in another or struggling against it with your own aches and pains… to be confronted with affliction is a reminder that something immense and cosmic is at stake: a heaven to be reached, a hell to be avoided, and a life on earth to be lived seriously and circumspectly.

“Our souls are the battleground on which massive spiritual battle are right not- right now in this minute- being waged. And the stakes are enormous. Beyond our conception.”

“Every day of our short lives- even every hour- has eternal consequences for good or ill. Eternity- and the way we’ll live in it- is somehow being shaped by our moment-by-moment responses to the life we have before us to live right now.

“And so it is only fitting that God should give us some sense of the stakes involved. I’m so grateful that life for us is not an easy road. If it were, if the Lord did not occasionally give us a taste of hell’s splashover, you and I would soon forget that this world is not our home. I’m also grateful that He opens our eyes from time to time to the magnitude of this spiritual war we are in. He does this by giving u wonderful foretastes of glory divine in the joys we experience, and He does it by allowing us foretastes of hell in our suffering. ”

Joni Eareckson Tada, A Place of Healing, pf 126-127