chapel hill ninjas

So, as I was leaving our worship planning meeting at church today, I looked out on the front lawn of the church and I saw a ninja.  I felt reasonably proud of myself, because if you know anything about ninjas (and I'm speaking as an expert here because I've seen a lot of movies with ninjas in them) you're not supposed to be able to see them.  Their main goal in life is to not be seen, and to do nefarious things while not being seen.  

I pointed said ninja out to a few co-workers, and soon, there was a second ninja.  

Speaking again as a ninja expert (see credentials above) I would say that in my professional opinion these were probably not real ninjas, but rather teenage boys engaged in some sort of ill-fated and inevitably regrettable shenanigans.  Anyway, I only mentioned the story about the ninjas because they reminded me that every once in a while you get an unexpected glimpse of the invisible, and sometimes it makes your day.  The "end" of this whole ordeal has been elusive to say the least.  For weeks we had no idea when this might end.  Weeks turned into months, and the months have dragged on.  Emily is about 11 days shy of being in the hospital for 3 months, and the light at the end of the tunnel finally seems like it is moving a bit closer.  Sometimes we feel like we might be catching a glimpse of the restoration to wholeness that we have been praying for.

I'm spending most of my creative energy on sermon writing this week (and thus you get a post about ninjas), but I did want to tell you about some of these glimpses and update you all on Emily's condition.  In a few words, she's doing much better these days.  As much as she wanted to eat real food again, not having eaten it for two and a half months meant that she had a bit of a rough transition back to eating.  Her stomach was giving her some trouble, and if you've ever had a bad stomach ache, you know this meant everything else seemed immeasurably more difficult.   She's overcome that difficulty, and is awaiting the final removal of her feeding tube.

Her tracheostomy is finally out, and mostly healed, which has been a big encouragement to her.  Rehabilitation is slow, but she is making progress.  I joke with her that she spends all day with her personal trainers working out, but she is taking this business of getting better very seriously.  She still can't move anything below her knees, but she's starting to get more feeling back in her feet, so we hope that's a good sign.  She still may need to come home in a wheelchair, so I might need to recruit a team to build a ramp onto the back porch in a few weeks.  The doctors are hoping that she will be discharged sometime before the 28th of June, and we hope that's the case, wheelchair or no wheelchair.