This poem was written by a 13 year old boy who died of a brain tumor that he had battled for four years. He died on December 14, 1997. He gave this to his mom before he died. His name was Ben.

My First Christmas in Heaven

I see the countless
Christmas trees
around the world below
With tiny lights, like Heaven's stars,
reflecting on the snow
The sight is so spectacular,
please wipe away the tear
For I am spending Christmas with
Jesus Christ this year.
I hear the many Christmas songs
that people hold so dear
But the sounds of music can't compare
with the Christmas choir up here.
I have no words to tell you,
the joy their voices bring,
For it is beyond description,
to hear the angels sing.
I know how much you miss me,
I see the pain inside your heart.
But I am not so far away,
We really aren't apart.
So be happy for me, dear ones,
You know I hold you dear.
And be glad I'm spending Christmas
with Jesus Christ this year.
I sent you each a special gift,
from my heavenly home above.
I sent you each a memory
of my undying love.
After all, love is a gift more precious
than pure gold.
was always most important
the stories Jesus told.
Please love and keep each other,
my Father said to do.
I can't count the blessing or love
he has for each of you.
So have a Merry Christmas and
Wipe away that tear
Remember, I am spending Christmas with
Jesus Christ this year

If you haven't read the book called CRAZY LOVE, you should.  This is a link to one of the videos that really got me thinking.  http://www.crazylovebook.com/videos_stop.html

Several weeks ago I heard a sermon that was about the old testament and the traditions that they used to follow.  One of the questions that the preacher asked was, "how would you feel if your son were going to be crucified?"  My first thought was, I know exactly how it feels.  Now, I didn't lose my son in the same cruel way but I do know how it feels.  How sad that I never really related or felt the pain until it happened to me.  God watched his son be beaten to death.  How horrible!!!!!  I've always gone to church since I can remember but the stories that I heard from the bible were simply that.....stories.  I hate to even admit this but they were almost like fairy tales.  I believed that they really happened but I never really fully whole-heartedly connected them to present day.  The closer I get to God, the more I realize how unworthy I am of his generous unmatchable gift.
GBC recently had a Fall Festival on October 30th.  We dressed up and had games and food and candy.  I think there were probably 200 folks that came in the door to participate in the festivities.  It was wonderful.  Bryan and I put together a photo booth with scarecrows, hay, pumpkins and fall leaves.  Bryan loves technology and gadgets so he recently purchased a professional lighting kit for taking photographs.  This is the second year that we have done the photo booth and it was a huge hit last year so we decided that we would continue with it every year.  So, we might as well make it as good as we can.  We took photos of families and printed them out while they were enjoying the other activities.  We would tell them to stop by our table on the way out to pick up their photo.  I can't tell you how many people looked at me and asked, "Is it free", or "It's really free"?  It was a look of shock and astonishment.  That evening when I got home I couldn't stop thinking about that question.  People were so excited about a free picture.  I guess I related it to me telling others about God and their salvation being FREE.  Hello!!!  I need to get as excited to whip out my bible and tell them what God is ready to give them for free.  I think about it a lot and I worry that I will offend people.  I'm ready to forget about offending people.  I need to tell them about GOD so they won't be mad at me when they are in hell wishing I would have told them.
Bryan and I have gone through radical changes over the past year.  We've gotten closer to God than we ever dreamed.  We've still got a long way to go.  And I hear people ask me how much worse could things get in their life? I truly believe that they can always be worse.  And the closer we get to God, the more Satan is going to tempt us and try to get us to believe his evil lies.  I'm more excited than I've ever been about going to church and learning more about our creator.
I'm positive that I wouldn't be where I am if Eden didn't come into our lives and change our hearts 180 degrees.  You see, not only did God's son save my life, my own son is changing my life every day.

Children's Park

Our amazing church donated money to have a stone engraved at the Children's Park in Tyler with Eden's name. (the picture is sideways because I'm not sure how to change it) The Children's Park is a park that was started by a mother who lost her little boy about 11 years ago. The sidewalks are lined with stones with children's names that have passed away. It's a beautiful park.
What a wonderful way to honor these angel babies. 

There was a ceremony this past saturday at the park that involved music and a roll call.  When they call the name of your child you are supposed to take a little angel ornament and put it on a tree.  At the end they let 230 butterflies go.  I'm sure it would have been a wonderful thing to attend but once we got there, we both realized we were NOT ready for that.  So, we went to Starbucks with my best friend and her sister and mom.  It ended up being a great day!!! 

Prayer answered

Bryan has suffered from epilepsy for about 7 years now. He would have grand mal seizures about 1/month. When we first moved to Tyler he started seeing his 5th or 6th neurologist. That Dr. had him start a new med that had less side effects. Unfortunately, the med didn't work well for Bryan. It actually increased his threshold and was causing him to have 3-4 seizures in a day about 3 times per month. It started getting very scary. That was in August and September of 2009. I had my appendix out in November of 2008 by a wonderful surgeon that I had become friends with over the past several months through my previous job selling surgical devices. He was one of the few surgeons that treated me like a human being. It was a God thing that he was the surgeon on call the night that I went to the ER. At my final post op appointment he asked us if we needed anything else. We asked him if he knew of a neurologist. Without hesitation he sent us directly to Dr. George Plotkin. He is world renowned and somehow ended up in Tyler, TX. My surgeon was able to pull a few strings and get us in to see Dr. Plotkin. It took about 6 months but we finally got to see him in September 09. Bryan and I were both in tears in his office. Not a single neurologist has spent so much time with Bryan trying to find out what was going on with his brain. He told us, "We will stop the seizures". It was simply amazing!! Bryan had his last seizure on October 23, 2009. He has now been seizure free for 1 year!!!! PRAISE GOD!!! We know that the whole thing was a God thing, no doubt. He is always watching out for us. Bryan will stay on the meds he is on for 5 years total. If he has no seizures during those 5 years, they will take him off his meds and consider his brain healed. The brain takes so long to heal but if you can keep from having seizures, it allows it to heal. Every seizure you have sets you back a little. What a blessing Dr. Plotkin and Dr. McGovern have been to us.

Random Thoughts

Lately, I can't seem to stop thinking about the last time I saw Eden. When Bryan and I finally decided that little Eden's body was starting to show the signs that his soul was gone, we made the call to the nurse that it was time to take him. He was wearing an infant onesie that completely sucked him up. The little sleeves were rolled up a few times (which reminded me a lot of Bryan when he wears long sleeved dress shirts) and he had a little white cotton hat on his wrinkled head. The hat kept falling off his head because it was way too big and like any mom would do, I kept putting it back on, as if he were cold. Once we made the call, I started to panic because I knew that once the nurse took him away, we'd never see our baby again until we see him in heaven. It was a very surreal moment when she knocked on the door. Her sweet face smiled at us as she asked us if we were ready. That is not a question that you can ever be prepared to answer. Bryan and I gave Eden one last kiss on his bright red lips. When the nurse cradled him, I couldn't see his face anymore. I'm so thankful that she didn't hang around much longer because I probably would have had a heart attack. It was also a good thing that I was still hooked to monitors and IV's because my first instinct was to run after her. How could they be taking my little baby to the morgue? He would be all alone. I was supposed to take care of him. I literally felt like my heart had been ripped out of my chest and carried away and I wasn't sure if I'd ever get it back. Bryan and I just hugged each other and cried for what seemed like forever. I slept about an hour that entire night.At about 4am I just started to bawl. My mom was 'sleeping' on the couch in the room so I was trying my hardest to cry quietly so I wouldn't wake her up. She sweetly rolled over and just smiled at me. There was really nothing to say. Bryan had gone home a couple of hours earlier to let our dog out and feed her since it had been 12 hours since we had been home. It was so hard to lay there and know that my son's body was in that hospital all by himself. I know that he was already having fun playing with golden blocks on Jesus' lap, but the mommy in me selfishly wanted the hold him and play with him. I read about something called empty arm syndrome and I learned very quickly that it is a real thing.
My point to writing all of this is to say this.....I thought that I may not get my heart back, but I am here to tell you that I not only have my heart back, it's much bigger. I feel an overwhelming love for every child I see. I work in a doctor's office that has the best pediatric ophthalmologist in the world as far as I am concerned. He sees children from hundreds of miles away. A lot of these children have terrible debilitating syndromes. I smile every day that I see them. God has a purpose for every single one of them and their parents. WE should all remember that every single human being is special.
This is from an interview with Rick Warren:

People ask me, What is the purpose of life?

And I respond: In a nutshell, life is preparation for eternity. We were not made to last forever, and God wants us to be with Him in Heaven.

One day my heart is going to stop, and that will be the end of my body-- but not the end of me.

I may live 60 to 100 years on earth, but I am going to spend trillions of years in eternity. This is the warm-up act - the dress rehearsal. God wants us to practice on earth what we will do forever in eternity..

We were made by God and for God, and until you figure that out, life isn't going to make sense.

Life is a series of problems: Either you are in one now, you're just coming out of one, or you're getting ready to go into another one.

The reason for this is that God is more interested in your character than your comfort; God is more interested in making your life holy than He is in making your life happy.

We can be reasonably happy here on earth, but that's not the goal of life. The goal is to grow in character, in Christ likeness.

This past year has been the greatest year of my life but also the toughest, with my wife, Kay, getting cancer.

I used to think that life was hills and valleys - you go through a dark time, then you go to the mountaintop, back and forth. I don't believe that anymore.

Rather than life being hills and valleys, I believe that it's kind of like two rails on a railroad track, and at all times you have something good and something bad in your life..

No matter how good things are in your life, there is always something bad that needs to be worked on.

And no matter how bad things are in your life, there is always something good you can thank God for.

You can focus on your purposes, or you can focus on your problems:

If you focus on your problems, you're going into self-centeredness, which is 'my problem, my issues, my pain.' But one of the easiest ways to get rid of pain is to get your focus off yourself and onto God and others.

We discovered quickly that in spite of the prayers of hundreds of thousands of people, God was not going to heal Kay or make it easy for her- It has been very difficult for her, and yet God has strengthened her character, given her a ministry of helping other people, given her a testimony, drawn her closer to Him and to people.

You have to learn to deal with both the good and the bad of life.

We need to ask ourselves: Am I going to live for possessions? Popularity?

Am I going to be driven by pressures? Guilt? Bitterness? Materialism? Or am I going to be driven by God's purposes (for my life)?

When I get up in the morning, I sit on the side of my bed and say, God, if I don't get anything else done today, I want to know You more and love You better. God didn't put me on earth just to fulfill a to-do list. He's more interested in what I am than what I do.

That's why we're called human beings, not human doings.

Happy moments, PRAISE GOD.

Difficult moments, SEEK GOD.

Quiet moments, WORSHIP GOD.

Painful moments, TRUST GOD.

Every moment, THANK GOD.."

And the devil sure is good at being the devil.  When you are trying extra hard to be a good witness he will put up road blocks to make it even more difficult.  Just remember JOB.  :)  

Dear Lord,

Thank you for giving me the best husband in the world, thank you for giving Eden to us. Thank you for giving me the best and the worst 7 months of my life. I have seen my husband as a father now. My love for him has changed and grown. Thank you for covering us in a warm blanket of prayers. Thank you for:

DELIVERANCE. You have been delivered from darkness (Colossians 1:13).
KNOWLEDGE.  You can be filled with the knowledge of His will (Colossians
1:19).
LIGHT. You are a child of the light (1Thessalonians 5:5)
GROWTH.  You can discover new things about God's love (Ephesians 3:18).
AUTHORITY.  You are seated with Christ (Ephesians 2:6).
FULLNESS.  You can be filled with God's fullness (Ephesians 3:19
COMFORT.  You are comforted in hard times (2 Corinthians 1:4)

Sincerely, 
Eden's Mommy

Test Results

It has now been 8 weeks since Eden was born. We have been waiting patiently for the test results to come back from Mayo Clinic. We were told it would take about 6 weeks for the results to be back.

Bryan and I have learned so much over the past year. We've learned that NOTHING is in our control. We have learned to be a stronger couple. We have learned to put things into perspective. We have learned that things that we thought were so important to us, really are not that important after all. We have learned that family is more than just a word. Time is not infinite, and it must be treasured. We are given gifts, gifts that must be cherished, because as quickly as we are given those gifts, they can be taken away. To live for today because tomorrow is not guaranteed. Not to dwell on what you don’t have, but to cherish what you do. Never to part without telling the ones you love what they mean to you. We have also gained more faith than we ever thought possible. We are so blessed that through this we have become closer to Our Father and hopefully others have gained more trust and faith through our little angel.

Eden's blood was tested to see if there were any chromosomal abnormalities. There was a sequence on chromosome 5 that came back abnormal. In turn, Bryan and I had our blood drawn to see if we were carriers of this abnormality. Mayo Clinic only has 2 other reported cases of this abnormality. The 2 cases both went on to live but both had mental retardation, cleft palates, etc. Eden did not have a cleft palate and the autopsy confirmed that his brain was completely normal, meaning there was no mental retardation. We were told that this could be what they call balanced translocation. It would be called this if Bryan or I were carriers. The results came back for Bryan and me and both of our chromosomes were completely normal. Mine was 46 XX and Bryan was 46 XY. Yay! When people are carriers of balanced translocations, they typically have several miscarriages but can go on to have perfectly normal children. In our case, it was determined to be a "fluke". This was something completely separate from the polycystic kidney disease (Potter's syndrome). We received these results about 3 weeks ago.

We finally got the results of the PKD this past week. The results read as such:

'A mutation was NOT detected. These results decrease the likelihood, but do not rule out the diagnosis of Autosomal Recessive Polycystic Kidney Disease. Some individuals with ARPKD have mutations that are not identified by the methods described.' Basically, our doctor said that this means that in Eden's case, it was considered a "fluke".

We weren't really sure what results we were hoping for. On one hand, you want a scientific reason that you can attribute this all to. But on the other hand, we didn't want to find out that one of us had something wrong with us. I find myself trying to rationalize it all in my head almost daily. I always come to the same conclusion.....no matter what the medical/scientific results said, it doesn't change the obvious: God can do whatever HE wants to. That's it!!! There is NO rationalizing or making sense of it. That is the only answer.

We know that God was taking care of Eden the whole time. If he had only had the chromosomal abnormality, he could have lived, but he may have had a difficult life. Since there are only 2 other cases of this reported we really don't know what kind of difficulties he would have had. The Polycystic Kidneys were the reason that he could not survive outside of the womb. So, God took Eden to live a perfect life in heaven rather than making him suffer on earth. In that way, we feel blessed.

As far as our future goes, we are going to be doing a lot of praying and even more trusting that He will take care of us. We would love to be parents again some day, but we will just have to wait until He is ready.