He is so good.

This week was concerning for us. Early Tuesday morning John woke to severe chest pain and a number of other symptoms. Without asking questions, the doctor recommended the ER. Having three young kids who would also be riding along in the middle of the night (and no fresh money on the money tree in the backyard), we first called my sister, a cardiovascular ICU nurse. After calls back and forth and some relief for John, we waited until morning.

He's been diagnosed with pericarditis. A visit to a cardiologist today confirmed the best-case scenario: treatable with Aleve, no permanent condition or effect, and we gained some knowledge from an echocardiogram and some labs that will help us avert the heart disease in his family history. We are so full of thankfulness!

God gave us great peace from the beginning. John longs for heaven like no one I've met, and even got a mischievous gleam in his eye when we didn't know what the outcome of this would be. (What a turkey.) God reminds me to number our days, and that all the days ordained for John were written in His book before one of them came to be.

On that note, I had to share this wonderful quote from FamilyLife's MomBlog with you.

Suppose you are a gardener employed by another. It is not your garden,
but you are called upon to tend it. You come one morning into the garden, and
you find that the best rose has been taken away. You are angry. You go to your
fellow servants and charge them with having taken the rose. They declare that
they had nothing to do with it, and one says, "I saw the master walking here
this morning; I think he took it." Is the gardener angry then? No, at once he
says, "I am happy that my rose should have been so fair as to attract the
attention of the master. It is his own. He has taken it, let him do what seems
good."

It is even so with your friends. They wither not by chance. The grave
is not filled by accident. Men die according to God's will. Your child is gone,
but the Master took it. Your husband is gone, your wife is buried—the Master
took them. Thank Him that He let you have the pleasure of caring for them and
tending them while they were here. And thank Him that as He gave, He Himself has taken away.

Those who know Christ can say, “If I should lose all I have, it is better that I should lose than have, if God so wills: the worst calamity is the wisest and the kindest thing that could befall me if God ordains it."

"We know that all things work together for good to them that love
God." Those who navigate little streams and shallow waters know little of the
God of tempests—but those who do business in deep and great waters see His
wonders!