Y’all, I just can’t seem to keep to a schedule with these blog posts! My goal for the last year has been to get on a more regular schedule for posting, with at least one post each week.

The last post I shared was in July. It is now September. Suffice it to say my plan is not working.

Anyway, since July things have been pretty calm when it comes to Harper. Now, in my own life with school and work and three children and a husband, not so calm, but maybe one day I’ll get around to a post about all that (or maybe not, given my track record…)

Harper started first grade and has adjusted so well thus far. She is all about becoming more independent and is so excited about learning new things. It has by far been our smoothest transition yet with her, which is an absolute answer to prayer.

As far as seizures go, I was feeling pretty confident in our level of control. We had not seen any daytime seizure activity since her hospital stay, and we spent the last couple of months weaning off of one of her medications. However, those pesky things have been trying to make a reappearance, so we are on heightened alert right now. She is back to having very restless sleep and waking up several times a night, and we have seen some seizure activity pretty consistently in the last week while she’s awake. Fortunately those episodes have not progressed to the full-blown tonic-clonic seizures, so we are still counting our blessings!

We do have a message in to the doctor to see what our next step is to stop these episodes since Harp is down to one med right now, and we have a trip to Duke on the schedule this week. While we have transitioned her seizure care to a neurologist at Johns Hopkins, we still have regular follow-ups and scans with her neurosurgeon at Duke. This week she will have an MRI to monitor the cysts and fluid in her brain, and we are praying that she will be cooperative and expecting nothing but good news!

This morning at church I heard a great message, and one of the points the pastor made really resonated with me. See, Harper is 6 1/2 years old now. We have been doing this for that many years, and we have been steadily praying all along the way. And while we have seen great miracles worked in her, we have not witnessed that total healing completely manifested yet. (And I do emphasize yet because I know it’s coming!).

We get tired. We get discouraged. We have our questions and wondering and not understanding. But this morning the pastor said something along these lines (and I’m sure he said it much more eloquently, but you’ll get the gist)- oftentimes God does not change our circumstances, but He changes US.

We are still in this battle. We still fight every day and our entire family is impacted in ways most people don’t even know. It’s been a long battle. BUT GOD has been faithfully changing each one of us along the way, revealing Himself in ways we never would have seen before, and growing us in ways that we would have never experienced. Our journey isn’t over, and He isn’t finished with us yet. We will choose to be thankful and give Him praise for all He has done, all He is doing, and all that He will still do. He is GOOD, y’all!