Such an ordinary weekend with such extraordinary meaning

This weekend was absolutely amazing!  We went to visit my sister and brother-in-law and had the best time imaginable.  We did nothing remarkable, and that was the most amazing part.

The day the call came,
Mark with his wife and son

77 days ago, my brother-in-law, Mark McEvoy had a double lung transplant that nearly cost him his life.  I was there the day the call came, later that afternoon we sat there, in the hospital room, awaiting his surgery, wondering how things would turn out. My sister had finally fallen a sleep for a little bit, after weeks of hardly resting at all. Mark sat in his hospital bed, hooked up to oxygen and I did everything I could as I watched him trace his 5 month old son's hand.  I watched him trying to memorize every little part of his precious baby's body, the wrinkles along each knuckle, the shape of his eyes and the size of his feet.  I watched Mark inventorying every detail about his sleeping son, wondering if it would be the last time he saw him.
And it nearly was.

Holding his 5 month old son's hand.

24 hours later we sat in the ICU waiting room, digesting the news that they didn't think he'd survive.  They couldn't control the bleeding after his transplant and they had placed Mark on life support.  At this point, they'd lost count of how many units of blood, platelets and plasma he'd received and were only focused on trying to transfuse him at the same rate he was losing blood.  They'd opened his chest up bedside and manually pumped his heart for him.  They were sure he'd had a stroke and didn't think he'd have the neurological function to breathe on his own again. His pupils were unresponsive, he was bleeding uncontrollably and his heart was at it's limit.  At this point, it was only through prayer that we had any hope at all.

It was a long few days following his transplant.  The hours ticked by so slowly... the nights were spent sleeping on a waiting room floor.  Finally after a week, we'd begun to see enough neurological function that we could grasp on to hope that he would make it...

77 days is a long time.  Mark's fought hard to heal and God's provided him with immeasurable strength.  We've seen more answered prayers than we can count - and that's exactly what this weekend marked for our family.

This weekend - hanging out
at the farmers market (the mask is
to protect mark from germs from others)

We traveled 5 hours to visit my brother-in-law and sister in their temporary home just a few miles from Stanford University.  We had the most normal weekend we've had since last summer.  We hung out.  We laughed, we cracked jokes, Mark teased our kids, they teased him back.  We ate way too much food, and had way too much fun, doing the absolutely normal things that we never thought we'd get to do with Mark.  It was blissful, and it was a weekend I will forever treasure!