Today was Good Friday.

A day set aside for quiet reflection, for standing at the foot of the Cross, for remembering that suffering is real and that God’s love is made manifest in the life, death and resurrection of Jesus.

And for our family, this isn’t just something we reflect on abstractly this year. Just a few short weeks ago, we felt like we were living it all in real time. 

The pain.
The sorrow.
The complete lack of control.
God’s presence. 

The BMT was horrific. No child should have to endure what EvanMarie endured in those gruesome chemo side effects. But it’s her best shot at healing. 
No mother or father should have to witness their child in so much pain. It really really sucked. And yet… this suck, this cross, might be my best shot at healing. 

Our wholeness must include the cross. 

And yet, today… I woke up feeling not wanting to wait until Sunday to celebrate the resurrection. Today is different than that Calvary of the 8th floor. Today, we are at home in the front yard. Today I’m watching EvanMarie giggle and twirl in her pink sparkly dress, laughing as she shows me how fast she can run and how proud she was when she got up on her scooter. 

Today, her personality, her spunk, her humor, her wonderfully opinionated and judgy self has fully returned.

We are back baby!

And this… this feels like resurrection.

Not fully. Not completely. Not finished.

But real and true. And worthy of a party. 

I’ve reflected before that flowers don’t always grow on the mountaintops, they grow down in the valley. And that last stint at Texas Children’s was a deep, deep valley. But now we are seeing those flowers.

Small, beautiful, wild! Signs of life pushing green and yellow and blue and purple, through the fertile soil of all of this suffering.

And to be honest, part of me wants to hesitate with this sensation of consolation today. 

There’s a voice that says: Wait. It’s only Good Friday. Stay here. Don’t move too quickly to the joy.

It’s wicked that I would think that somehow, celebrating today would be doing Holy Week all wrong. Agh! Scrupulous much?

Bleh. Not this year. 

Because through this difficult experience, I’ve been reminded again, the Paschal Mystery is not something we visit once a year. It’s already here. It’s now. And it’s not yet. 

It is something we can live everyday and long for its completion in us. 

The Cross and the Resurrection are not separate moments on a liturgical calendar, they are happening together, right now, Sacramentally present at the altar and in our wild and ordinary lives.

Suffering and joy.
Death and life.
Tears and laughter.

All in the same day. Sometimes in the same hour.

So if today we laugh…
if today we celebrate…
if today I even hide a few Easter eggs for our sweet baby daughter…

it is not a rejection of the Cross at all.

It is a recognition that resurrection has already begun.

God is not bound by time.

He was.
He is.
And He is to come.

And so this Good Friday, we remain at the Cross. But, we also dare to notice the beautiful wild flowers growing in this valley.

Love is here.
Joy is here.
God is here.

Jesus, we trust in You.
Jesus, we surrender ourselves to You.
Take care of everything.

Cheers and Happy Easter everyone! 

PS: This video says it all. This is our girl running through the skybridges of TCH in between her 9 (!) appointments on Tuesday. She is the most adorable and brightest light in this place. A living witness to true Easter joy.

​Team EvanMarie, we have wonderful news: she is coming home today!

After being admitted way back on February 19 for a bone marrow transplant, EvanMarie has crossed all the benchmarks the doctors were hoping to see in her engraftment and recovery, and they have given us the green light to leave the hospital. It has been nearly a month on floor 8, perhaps the hardest month our family has ever endured, but God has brought us through it all.

Thank you for the continued prayers! Home will not be without its challenges. EvanMarie’s body is still very weak, and we will need time to readjust to life all together again, as she continues to heal. But home is where she belongs. Home is the best place for her recovery.

This past month has stretched us in ways we never imagined. And yet, through every long night and difficult day, we have felt the presence of God and our community. We come out of this season stronger, more grateful, and more dependent on God than ever before.

As we enter these final weeks of Lent, we give all glory to the One who sacrificed everything for our sake. In our own small way we take up the crosses entrusted to us, striving to follow the Father in obedience and to unite our sufferings with the suffering Body of Christ. 

Thank you for walking this road with us. This milestone feels like a huge step in her total healing. Glory to God in all things.

​EvanMarie had a good day yesterday and today. Thank God, she’s starting to feel more like herself again, playing games, joking, and being opinionated about everything, especially her parents’ recommendations. After some heavy negotiating (and a few bribes) yesterday, she finally brushed her teeth, which felt like a huge win. She’s also eating a little bit of yogurt and drinking water now.

If you were wondering, EvanMarie’s strong will is alive and well, y’all, and right now that old stubbornness of hers is working in her favor.

We also have some encouraging medical news. Her stem cells have officially engrafted, which means her bone marrow transplant is complete. Her ANC (the measure of her white blood cells) has now been above 1500 for two days in a row, a major milestone that shows her new immune system is beginning to do its work. This means we will be talking about discharge soon. 

These past three weeks have been incredibly difficult, and we want to take a moment to give big props to her incredible siblings: Madeline, Dominic, Sophia, Avila, Lucia, Quinn, Zelie, and Oliver.

Some kids spend their spring break at the beach or on a mission trip somewhere far away. Ours decided to mission right here at home, taking care of one another, especially their five-year-old brother, and keeping the household moving along while Cana and I spend long days and nights at the hospital.

Their selflessness, teamwork, and love for their little sister have made it possible for us to be here with EvanMarie, guiding her through this difficult stretch. We are incredibly proud of our children, and deeply grateful to God for them.

Our family is very tired, but full of hope. 

And we are so thankful for the prayers and support that continue to carry us along this long hard road.

Today is transplant day!

We are filled with gratitude and quiet awe. EvanMarie has bravely endured the heaviest round of chemotherapy yet. The past six days have been very, very trying, long hours, tough side effects, moments that stretched our family to its limit. But by the grace of God and some amazing nurses, she made it through. Thank God we are done with that portion.

Now comes the next step: her own preserved stem cells will be infused back into her body. It is a remarkable gift of modern medicine that we do not take for granted. We thank God for the doctors, the science, and the wisdom that makes this all possible.

For now, the poor girl is confined to her hospital room to protect her from infection as her immune system rebuilds. It will be a slow and careful recovery that could take up to 3 more weeks. 

Please continue to pray, for protection, for strength, and of course for complete healing. But today, more than anything, thank God with us. She has made it this far! The treatment is working. And hope is still very much alive.

Glory to God in all things.

​Friends, 
We are entering what is likely the most intense phase of EvanMarie’s treatment: an Autologous Bone Marrow Transplant.

In the coming days, she will receive six consecutive days of high-dose chemotherapy, followed by a day of rest, and then the return of her own preserved stem cells to her body, cells that were collected last fall in preparation for this moment. After that comes recovery, which can take three to four weeks. EvanMarie will be inpatient at TCH for approximately a month. She will then have three weeks at home, and then go back in and do it all again. And that takes us to about May. 

It is daunting. But it is what we and our doctors have concluded is her best shot at complete healing. We walk into it with eyes wide open and hearts surrendered. We trust. 

And thank God for Texas Children’s Hospital. We feel profoundly cared for there, not just medically, but personally. EvanMarie is known and loved by the nurses and doctors, and that gives us deep peace as we step into something this serious.

And we need you, our community, perhaps more than ever.

We are asking you to consider making a holy hour this week for EvanMarie, specifically praying for her peace, protection, endurance, and complete healing. And as always, we entrust her in a special way to the intercession of Blessed Stanley Rother and the Holy Family.

Jesus, we trust in You.
Jesus, we surrender.

In addition to your prayers, we humbly ask for some practical support. While we are spending extended time at the hospital, meals are a tremendous gift to our family and to EvanMarie’s siblings, who are walking this road so bravely alongside her.

And because joy still matters, if you’d like to show EvanMarie your support, we are asking you paint your nails pink (the more sparkle the better). Men, toenails absolutely count! She loves pink, and she loves you, and photos of your smiles and nails will remind her that she is surrounded even when she is stuck in her hospital room.

We are grateful beyond words for this community. Your prayers are not abstract to us. They are tangible. We feel them. They steady us everyday.

This is a serious battle we are facing. But we know we are not alone. 

Glory to God in all things.

After a whole week at home surrounded by her family and friends and her favorite things, our precious EvanMarie returned to the hospital today for more disease assessment. This time, she underwent another bone marrow biopsy.

She was so very brave today. She handled the procedure beautifully, and we felt the covering of your prayers over her and us the entire time. Even in the hardest moments, there was a steady peace that can only be described as grace. She is now back snug in her bed at home and happy. She should only be sore for a few days. 

If you remember, last time this test was performed, small amounts of cancer were found in her bone marrow. Today we pray boldly that the chemotherapy she has already endured has cleared it completely. We now wait with hope for the results, trusting that God has been at work in ways seen and unseen.

On February 19, EvanMarie will be admitted for approximately one month to begin an autologous stem cell transplant or bone marrow transplant (BMT). The stem cells collected from her last fall will be returned to her after extremely high doses of chemotherapy, given with the hope of eliminating any remaining cancer cells and resetting her immune system. And she will undergo this intense process TWICE.

It is a lot to take in for us. And yet, we remain steady and hopeful. 

If you are still reading please pray with us.

Pray for her comfort through the next few days. Pray for courage and protection as we approach transplant. Pray that every remaining cancer cell would be eradicated. Pray for peace to guard our hearts.

We are beginning the Surrender Novena again tonight and warmly invite you to join us. “Jesus, I surrender myself to You, take care of everything.”

Thank you, from the depths of our hearts, for walking with us this far and for holding us in prayer. We believe in grace. We believe in miracles. We know God hears our prayers.

​Dear friends, we wanted to share the results of EvanMarie’s MIBG scan honestly and from the heart. Her Curie score came back as a 1. Medically, this is an expected result and is not bad news. And yet, after months of better-than-expected and even extraordinary progress, this news landed with a quiet thud.

It caught us off guard because it feels, once again, like a diagnosis, a reminder that our dear daughter still has cancer, a nasty and aggressive form of childhood cancer. We always knew this would be a long and difficult fight, but this result brings that truth back into sharp focus. We are just not finished yet. 

And so, dear friends, we keep going.

We continue to fight.
We continue to hope.
We continue to storm heaven for EvanMarie’s complete healing.

Today, we once again surrender our daughter into God’s eternal and good plan, trusting that He is still at work, even when the news is harder to hold than expected. Thank you for standing with us, praying with us, and believing in miracles with us as we press on together.