Good morning…
Notre Dame 27. Penn State 24. Having fallen asleep last night watching the game, I just woke to check the final score. Amazing! Audrey DeShetler’s team won. Having reserved a $150 student ticket, Audrey will be going to the National Championship game to cheer on her Fighting Irish. It was certainly a high for Audrey in October when coach Marcus Freeman and some of the Notre Dame players visited with her at the medical center.
We’ve been journeying closely with Audrey and her family since she was diagnosed with neuroblastoma at age five. Through the ups and downs of various treatments and relapses and hospital stays and medical trials and anxious scans and positive results and negative ones, we have journeyed together, closely. Audrey is now nineteen years old, a freshman loving her experience at Notre Dame. So, a high point for me this week was sharing lunch with Audrey and her brother Scott, her mom Jennifer and our dear friend Joan Marie.
It’s a bittersweet low for me each time I get a text from Jennifer, “Scanning now.” Bitter, because I hate that Audrey’s little body has to go through this again and again. Sweet, because I have the privilege of praying for her in these important moments. The vulnerable photo sent each time helps me to pray with my whole heart. Our hope is always N.E.D. (No Evidence of Disease). Sometimes the results bring a high to savor. Other results over the years have brought extreme lows. Yesterday’s scan results are not yet in.
The DeShetlers hoped to complete yesterday’s scans and then, as a family of four, to take a road trip adventure together, driving Audrey back to school in Indiana before the predicted wintery mix descends upon Atlanta. (This is a family who certainly knows how to make peak memories all along life’s twisted way.) But, I received a text from Jennifer around 5:oo pm. “Got a call from the pulmonologist and right now we are in emergency admit to hospital because her lungs basically are worsening at a rate he has never seen before.” Oh no! Crashing down to another low.
I really hope that Audrey’s spirits were lifted as she watched last night’s Notre Dame win from her hospital bed. Now I ask that we all surround Audrey with our heartfelt prayers, as the family searches diligently for a healing path forward.
We have journeyed with Audrey, her family, and our loving God for years and years and years, and I’m absolutely convinced that nothing—nothing living or dead, angelic or demonic, today or tomorrow, high or low, thinkable or unthinkable—absolutely nothing can get between us and God’s love because of the way that Jesus our Master has embraced us (Romans 8:39, MSG).
With Jesus embracing us tenderly, constantly, we are quietly carried over all of life’s treacherous terrain. As we prayerfully process the ups and downs of life together, nothing can get between us and God’s love. Of this, I am absolutely convinced.
…Sue…
