Shameless Self-Promotion

Some have been clamoring for details on different events that are coming up to help us raise money for Andrew's bills. Two events are happening this month!

About a month ago we were contacted by a company in Fishersville, Miller's Storage Buildings, because they were interesting in hosting a fundraising event for us. Every year Miller's puts on a community wide yard sale extravaganza and donates all the proceeds to a charity. This year they chose to support us. Miller’s is donating a bunch of radio and newspaper advertising to promote this event, as well as getting bands to perform, merchants selling their goods, food to buy, and even donating one of their buildings for a silent auction.  The big event though is a yard sale open to the whole community. To get items for that yard sale though we need your help. We need mass quantities of the stuff from your basements, closets, and attics along with baked goods to sell at the sale.  If you live in the area we need you to drop off your “sellables” during the week of April 5.  The more the merrier!  Baked goods should be delivered on Saturday morning. Details on the event can be found at www.millersstoragebuildings.com beginning on Thursday, March 31st. 

The second event is a night of story and song on Friday, April 30th from 7pm - 9pm at Tabernacle PCA in Waynesboro. The event, entitled Pilgrim Road: A Journey of Faith and Hope will tell the story of our family interspersed with music (some original some not) performed live by myself and some friends. Donations will be accepted but admission is free. All proceeds from both of these events will go directly to our family. If for no other reason please come and be with us. Please come and remember and cry and struggle and rejoice with us. We aren't the only ones on this journey; many of you have travelled with us. Even if we were, we would want you there.

We are so incredibly thankful for the generosity of many we know and even some we don't know who are helping to bear some of the burden of this with us. God has been faithful to us and will continue to be.

Tomorrow (Thurs) we travel back to UVA for Andrew's first scheduled check-up with his oncologist. It is strange that something so simple should produce such anxiety. Andrew is doing well and yet we cannot shake the fear, fear of something we cannot see and in many ways still cannot comprehend. This is yet another part of this journey that is surprising, the constant fear of something coming back even when Andrew is "better". You cannot quantify it nor can you really describe it. It is like the fear that comes with shadows; formless, incorporeal, and yet horrible. The reality is that we want to ask, "when will this end?" but it won't. Every time he gets a cough we will think of the cough that led us to a CT. Every time he gets blood work or a scan we will hold our breath. Every time something just isn't healing fast enough or doesn't go away quick enough, dire thoughts will enter unbidden. Tonight Jess described it as innocence lost and she is right. Innocence is never something that you get back. Even in the New Creation, when Jesus remakes the world, I don't think innocence (in this sense) is restored. Innocence implies a lack of experience with fallenness. Jesus will wipe away tears, not make them as if they didn't happen. Somehow, in some wisdom I probably will never understand, innocence won't be restored but redeemed. Right now I cannot understand how cancer can be redeemed, how that kind of fear can be redeemed, yet I know it will. Perhaps better would be to say I trust that it will... knowing requires more faith than perhaps I can muster at this point. "The road goes ever on and on, out from the door where it began," the old hobbit said and we still walk it. It will lead to a good place but there are times when the walking is hard even when the sun is shining. That sounds strange doesn't it?