Abby's Happy Birthday

   This is the story of a community of God's people really stepping in to love in truth and with actions!  I want to be like them!!  Abby had planned her party to be on Nov. 2, a little more than a week past her birthday so that her good friend would be able to be there.   Of course we had no way of knowing what would happen in the week between her birthday (and Nathanael's) and the day of her party.  Nathanael had been sick for a few days and my heart was heavy and struggling to get in the party spirit!  Poor Abby seems to often get the short end of the stick lately when it comes to birthday parties, so I really wanted to help make this one fun for her.  We love that girl a ton.  "Father's joy" she is named and so she is to us all!
   But on the morning of the party day, as I am checking for the cakes to be done in oven, we get the call from the doctor that Nathanael's blood sugar is dangerously high (read about this in the previous post) and my mind starts racing.  What should I do about the party??  Surely I can't still do it, can I?  Oh, but I just can't cancel it!  So I wrestle.... But just that morning, as I do every glorious Friday morning, I was praying with a sweet, kindred friend of mine, and us knowing that something big was happening with Nathanael, I asked her to also pray with me for my sweet Abby and her birthday party.  So when another wonderful friend arrives to care for the kids, while I follow David and the sick boy to the ER, both these lovely friends talk.  And I get a text saying, 'don't worry about the party.  We'll take care of it!'  Even now it brings tears to my eyes!  So my kindred friend takes my girls for the day and decorate cakes, shop for snacks and party favors with great generosity, and decorate the party location!  And that splendidly decorated cake is the work of my artsy oldest daughter, who loved getting to decorate a birthday cake, 'cause in my house that is the mama's job!  And my friend and her husband, rework their date to decorate and host my sweet girl's camping birthday party.  All while another friend has the boys, making plans with yet another friend to keep them all for the night so that I can spend this scary night in the PICU with my baby.
    So after the sick one is settled in his new room, I leave Dad and babe to attend the party of my girl!  And as I arrive and see the tent, and owl and backpack and checked table cloth and bowls of snacks brought by several friends, and see the beautiful cake, I almost cry again!  Overwhelmed by real, tangible, sacrificing love!  Only the raccoon saved me the tears!  This was a family joke and was added to the cake to remind us of a recent camping experience, which made me laugh loud and long!  We sing happy birthday to my girl and this is all happening because of real love and real sacrifice!  And she opens presents from friends of hers and friends of mine, 'just wanting to make sure her party was special' they say. And again, as I drive back to the hospital, thinking about all the ways, too many to record here, but surely recorded in God's great record book, that our friends loved us on that day, I really was overcome!  I cried more joy-tears over all of these things than mournful tears over Nathanael.
And this is what it means to be family, to be part of a Body, whose head is Jesus.
When one hurts, all hurt together.  And when one rejoices, all enter into the rejoicing!
What a lavish God we serve!  And oh, I want to love like they did, like He loves!

Even with her eyes closed, she is so pretty!

Is Rachel sleepy, or just part of the decorations?

This is the camp fire that my sweet friend's husband made for the party.  He is joined here by Micah and his buddy Aiden.  The girls didn't like the fire nearly as much as the little brothers did!