Archive of ‘Dan Posts’ category

Shame and Gratitude. A Dan Post

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Note to Dan
“I was usually filled with a sense of something like shame until I’d remember that wonderful line of Blake’s-that we are here to endure the beams of love-and I would take a long deep breath and force these words out of my strangulated throat: ‘Thank you.'”-Anne Lamott

Over the past thirteen years of unrelenting hard I have experienced a roller coaster of emotions, but the two I feel the majority of the time are polar opposites.

In-between acute shame and astonished gratefulness lies Grace.

The word ‘numb’ is described as being “deprived of feeling or responsiveness.” After experiencing three brain and spine surgeries for Danica, dozens upon dozens of surgeries and medical procedures for my wife, and now a brain surgery for Delaney, numbness is a necessary survival tactic I must employ to get through all I’m asked to do. My life is work that will never provide enough for my wife and daughters. My life is loving through service that will never overcome their suffering. My effort will never be enough. I’m ashamed. I stuff it deep down inside to carry on with the next thing.

K.J. Ramsey writes in her book ‘This Too Shall Last. Finding Grace When Suffering Lingers’:

Deep down, our greatest fear is that if we express how broken and scared we really feel, we will sink into complete darkness. We fear that expressing the depth of our discouragement will separate us from God. This is the knife edge of shame in suffering, the Enemy’s favorite weapon in defeating us, depressing us, and holding us back from the love we were created to receive.

Gratitude for provision of this home is something I breathe. Access to the best surgeon and healing after Delaney’s Chiari decompression, her scholarship to ASU, Danica’s scholarship to Pusch Ridge Christian Academy, a job that’s held through the pandemic and continues to provide insurance for the girls, my wife’s working shunt and my own health are gifts. I consider them more than I worry about what is next, because God has been so faithful. There is no good thing I take for granted.

My wife mostly handles all the bills. Along with being sick she considers this responsibility of access to care her full time job. I see the way she opens the mail and adds statements to three stacks of papers on her desk neatly organized with binder clips. She has a sticky note on each stack with a total due: Monica’s medical bills, Delaney’s medical bills, Danica’s medical bills and bills in collections. She’s a master at paying what she can to keep access to their doctors and surgeons, making payment arrangements with others and letting some go to collections. The sheer number of specialists, hospitals, imaging centers and surgical costs broken down make me sick to my stomach. Somehow she has managed this weight since the months of hospitalization and Danica’s birth and NICU stay in 2007. I’ve been told we should never feel guilty about this, we did nothing wrong to end up here and no family, however wealthy, would be able to crawl out from under this never ending debt. Still I’m ashamed. I stuff it deep down inside to carry on with the next thing. Monica needs another major spine surgery. She needs to see several other doctors about serious mast cell reactions and her bladder. She’s been suffering with a mouth wound for ten months. She’s needed to spend days in bed lately from debilitating headaches. She’s stopped seeking help for now because of a laser focus on the girl’s needs and her unwillingness to create more debt or cry out for help. This breaks my heart.

About a month ago my trusty old Honda Accord needed two new tires, brakes and some other work. The total was $989.03. Our delicately balanced survival budget always necessitates these kinds of unexpected expenses go on a credit card. That same week a letter arrived addressed to me from a man I’ve never met. It was a check for $1,000 and a note that read: “Dan, Here is something to help you take care of your precious girls. You are a good man Dan Snyder!” This love, man to man, somehow took away the crippling shame of receiving. Our life is full of stories like this one. Monica has needed to stay quiet about mounting financial stress since Delaney’s surgery. I’ve always seen God providing when she humbly asked for help on Facebook or GoFundMe. This particular and personal provision was God’s reassurance we are not alone. He will continue to meet every need even when we are too tired or embarrassed to ask. During that same time we were waiting to get important genetic testing done for Danica based on new symptoms and her recent imaging. The box and collection kit from the company was sitting on Monica’s desk for weeks because we needed to pay before we sent the sample. Once again a check arrived in the mail. Just enough.

This consistent display of God’s faithfulness awakens my dull senses and gives me hope.

My life is a ‘Thank you’ greater than shame.
His Grace is always greater.

“And my God will meet all your needs according to the riches of his glory in Christ Jesus. To our God and Father be glory for ever and ever. Amen.” Philippians 4:19-20

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Dear Dan. On Father’s Day

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Father's Day

Dear Dan,

I hate I wasn’t there yesterday to celebrate you. Delaney and I are in New York for surgery and you are in Arizona with Danica and Twix. We’ve been apart for so many ‘special’ days I quit trying to quantify the loss, but it still hurts. As I read other’s facebook posts about their husbands and fathers and even wrote something to my own dad I realized painting your love with a broad stroke and a few words wouldn’t do. I refuse to romanticize the way you care for us. This kind of long faithfulness is hard and messy work. Last night I searched all the blog entries you wrote on the old Team Danica site and ugly cried my way through them. Your unique voice in all this suffering is necessary and true.

Less than a month ago, on the night of Delaney’s ‘actual’ graduation, you picked up tacos for dinner on your way home from work. Delaney was hurting that day and made the decision she couldn’t physically go to the graduation watch party planned. We all felt a strange grief choking us. When you arrived the girls were grabbing paper plates and napkins and getting glasses for drinks and there was a general sense of rushing to eat. Danica sat on the end of the bench at the table and Delaney pulled out the other end quickly. Danica fell backwards off the bench and hit her head. You lost it. You didn’t curse or yell. Instead, in a pained sarcastic way, you clapped loudly. The incident triggered something in all of us and dinner was over before it began. After we were sure Danica was physically okay Delaney ran to her room and sobbed her heart out. You retreated to the hammock in the back yard feeling awful. You explained how almost every minute of every day you are holding your breath waiting for the accident that breaks Danica’s hardware and fusion again. Most of the time you are able to keep this feeling out of reach but when something like the fall happens your heart is split open for us all to see. I carry this fear too, but I shine it up with faith to make it more bearable. There is something about Delaney’s Chiari diagnosis that’s exposed us in new ways.

The mood stabilizer I take keeps me steady most of the time. Once in awhile I open the flood gates with you. You let me say the same things over and over. I tell you how I don’t think I can embody this pain one more day or continue to watch our girls suffer. You see me and you hear me, and it helps me go on. I wipe my tears, blow my nose and make a plan for the next impossible thing. I go over the appointments, the insurance battles, the money that isn’t there and the bills I’m prioritizing. I talk about the girls and their emotional needs on top of the physical stuff. This is my way of trying to maintain some control in a life that is almost nothing like we thought we wanted it to be.

Somewhere in the midst of our mess, you have this other world to manage too. You leave the house at 4:30 am every day to work. I don’t think you’ve taken a true sick day in over a decade. You have never complained. Our family has always come first and any personal ambition or desire for success has taken a back seat to the need for steady insurance coverage and a schedule that allows you to be there in the afternoons and evening when my spoons are gone. Moving to Arizona to start over with a company that has no understanding of our complicated medical journey has made it even more difficult.

No one really knows the Dan I first met and fell in love with. The Inner Circle award winner. Your life with the trips and recognition. The bonuses and stability. The social network. The friends. Golf. Your luxury car. Your boat. Your motorcycle. Things that made a life outside of what I was to you. I have seen you sacrifice everything down to the most humbling day when I gave you my beautiful diamond solitaire in the red and gold box to sell for bills. The stone you studied and chose. The perfect carat with perfect color and clarity you had worked so hard to pay for and gave me on the beach in Kauai. You brought me the setting back empty, and we both cried. Nothing was sacred in our desperate attempt to stay afloat.

I have never seen or heard or read in a fairy tale or real life about a man who loves like you do. A chronically ill woman once compared her steady husband with you. She said something that shocked me. She said, “Most men would have left women like us.” Here’s the thing. I have never once felt like you would leave me. Your love is that sure. You are a mirror of God’s love. When I can do absolutely nothing to be your help you still cherish me. When the only physical connection we can make is less than a hug because of my pain you sniff my neck deeply and sigh, not out of frustration but as if you are still intoxicated with something only you know resides in this shell. You treat me like a soul. You respect me. You forgive me over and over again for the hard edge I carry most of the time. You are so fierce in your commitment it frightens me, because I still can’t believe it’s possible.

I want to do something huge for you. I want to give you a break. I want to spend a week with just you and feel even a fraction better than I do now so I can give you all my attention. I want you to know friends again and have something to say to anyone besides how hard it is all the time over here. I want you to experience recreation or pleasure without a single shadow overhead. I want to sit in the sun with both our faces burning and feel the exact same release at the exact same time and say together, “This is good.” I want you to feel the escape you loved about riding your motorcycle alone on a spring day in Maryland down an open road lined with flowering pear trees. I want to have a meal with you and not think about what it costs or what in it might make me sick or how long we have before I crash. I want to taste every single ingredient and talk about them and sip the notes in our wine like a symphony and tell the truth in the clear way we used to on special nights alone. I want to be healthy for just one more night so I can make love to you the way I used to, when our bodies and spirits were so melded it was as if you were wearing my skin and I was wearing yours. I want to laugh out loud and not have it catch in my throat like a knife. You always make me laugh. I love how you make me laugh.

So much of your love is about Delaney and Danica too. I don’t know any other man who works all day and comes home to work just as hard. You don’t sit down until you have a load of laundry in and the dishwasher emptied and coffee ready for the next morning. You run the vacuum and ask me what else you could possibly do to make something easier or less painful for me. On nights I know you are starving, you will eat a bowl of cereal without complaining because I just couldn’t make dinner and nights I do cook you tell me how much you appreciate it. “Good job, Monki.” And in those words you are saying so much more because you know how much it hurt to stand and stir and lift and open and shut to make a simple meal. You step in for carpool and shopping and every endless outing moms have to make when I can’t. When I try to go along you have my back and see the look in my face when I’m done. You protect me even from our children on my hardest days. This hurts us both, and I don’t know any other man who is this brave.

I pray for you. I ask God to give you the strength you need to keep doing this impossible thing you have somehow made possible for us. I beg Him to bring you rest or relief or joy of any kind. I thank Him for you so many times every day and every night.

I know we quit looking for the reasons all this happened to us. I know we stopped believing it was punishment for something we did. I know we quit asking almost all the whys and have learned together to take it minute by minute, hour by hour as it comes. I just have to say it over and over. There is no one else who could have stood in the stormy waves this long and not turned and swam to save themselves. You were made for me. You were made to love Delaney and Danica. Every part of your life until our life began made you ready to be the man you are.

Thank you.
Two silly words.

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Desert Rain. A Dan Post

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rainbow
If all of life were sunshine,
Our face would long to gain,
And feel once more upon it
The cooling splash of rain.-Henry Jackson Vandyke

I was born in Kirkland, just outside of Seattle, WA. This fact alone is nothing special unless you consider my parents and siblings were all from Virginia. My childhood was spent playing from dawn to dusk in the city neighborhood of St. Charles, Missouri followed by my formative teen years in southern Maryland. My wife and I met in Northern Virginia where I owned my first home. Delaney was born in Rittman, Ohio and Danica was born in Rockville, Maryland five years later. “Glass half full” readers will appreciate how adventurous my life has been while “glass half empty” readers might look upon this never putting down real roots as a challenge. I tend to view the volume of liquid in my glass as what God has provided, nothing more and nothing less. But my soul aches against this simplistic truth.

Thanks to blessings beyond what words can describe, I live in Tucson now. My daughters attend a Christian school and my wife no longer suffers debilitating pressure headaches every day. Hours upon hours of mowing the yard, raking the leaves, shoveling snow or driving in inclement weather are of no concern here in the desert. I rise each morning with the light anxious to stare at the everchanging mountains as each peak slowly comes into focus while the sun travels across a pure blue sky. Desert tan ridges and valleys turn orange as the sun sets to sleep in the west. The firework finale is held each evening as the sun disappears exploding its prism of orange, pink and yellow rays of light far into the atmosphere. We step outside this borrowed home almost every night to marvel how He does it again and again. The photos we post online do not come close to conveying this experience in person. The many stars in the clear sky get brighter each hour. My soul is still searching.

I haven’t written here in a very long time, but if you read Team Danica you might remember I referenced my favorite book in the Bible as second Corinthians. Paul encourages the readers that God’s Grace is always sufficient, and His power is strengthened in weakness. My family and I’s hardships and faith struggles have been well documented by my wife. But my private weakness, something I rarely share, is in not trusting the Lord enough even after all I’ve seen Him accomplish. I feel like I have been left wandering in the desert for forty years fearing each day and what’s to come. Every morning my last words to my girls as I drop them off at school are, “BE SAFE, BE SAFE.” Energized by the Tucson climate and a true chance to be more well my wife is exploring more of her world, venturing off to the grocery store, a Bible study or the writing workshop she just began. When we sit and talk in the evening, I am always fearful she will tell me she’s twisted her neck or spine. I live just one breath away from her or Danica needing another surgery. When most men my age have achieved success in their career and may be thinking of retirement, I am still needing to update my job resume and plan for interviews. I’m faced with a feeling of shame and despair that I will never be able to fully provide for our complicated needs. When most families I know are secure in their home and saving memories, I am stressed about where we will live when our current miracle runs out. We have seven months left in this house. My soul is restless.

It’s been raining all day here in the desert on this Super Sunday. My wife has a headache though it’s a “Tucson headache” which means she can at least get out of bed, but her heart hurts where her shunt empties fluid. She is running mostly on adrenaline now. We will be driving almost two hours away for her first Arizona infusion on Wednesday. Her autoimmune encephalitis/PANDAS/PANS symptoms are worse every day. She’s gone too long between treatments. Medicare finally approved paying eighty percent of this very expensive drug. Driving far for health appointments is nothing new, but we feel the same dread every time. I plan to study the long six to eight hours during her drip for a new technical certification with hopes that I can find yet another job to support my family more adequately. Even if a new job just means being able to add primary insurance for Monica it will be better.

We read in the book of Isaiah this morning. In verse two of chapter forty-nine he says, “…in the shadow of His hand hath He hid me, and made me a polished shaft; in His quiver hath He hid me.” I feel like I have lived in the shadows most of my life. I’ve never seen them as protection or a version of grace. Only since our move here have I gained a perspective to try and understand all our hard and all your love as a kind of holding or covering and maybe even safe hiding. But I’m tired. So tired. My soul longs for rest.

Each morning I do what my father taught me. I wake up and slay dragons. I do the next thing one day at a time. I do not boast of my struggles, for when I am weak, for Christ’s sake, then I am strong. My gratitude for those who have walked with my family and I over the long years is unbounding. It is with deep appreciation that I strive forward. A wandering soul was born in the west years ago. Now when I see a shadowy cloud seemingly lost in the blue sky I will remember it can be shelter. When I feel the desert rain I will understand it is the watering of a rooting soul at peace.

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On Receiving. An Open Letter of Gratitude. A Dan Post

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FamilyLane (2)

“The only way I know to be honestly willing to receive hard things as gifts from God is to consider how they foster the fruits of the Spirit: love, joy, peace, patience, kindness, goodness, faithfulness, gentleness and self-control. Even the best gifts may come with an unexpected cost. Every gift changes something–the shape of the day, the balance of a relationship, or just the space available on a shelf or in a drawer. To receive it is to accept that shift, slight or dramatic, and to make an adjustment. When Jesus gathered the disciples after the Resurection, he conferred on them a gift that changed them and the course of history when “He breathed on them and said to them ‘Receive the Holy Spirit.'” It wasn’t what they were expecting. Nor, when the Spirit comes to us, with inspiration or direction or unexpected comfort, are we fully prepared. But we can practice the open-heartedness that says “Yes–thank you–I accept,” whatever it may cost, knowing the gift, yet to be fully disclosed, holds more promise than we imagine.”–Marylin McEntyre, Word by Word: A Daily Spiritual Practice

I’m sitting here in a recliner in the infusion room at the cancer center, eight long hours into my day of IV medications and slow Rituxin drip. It’s the longest I’ve been away from Danica in over five weeks. I feel like a piece of me is missing. I thought I might finally exhale today. I’ve desperately needed time alone. Unfortunately the TV has been blaring talk shows and soap operas for an elderly lady in the back row. Even my ear buds and peaceful music cannot drowned out the raucous sounds. I’m sicker than usual and frustrated at my inability to accomplish anything except breathe in and out. I brought a stack of thank you notes addressed and stamped, but I haven’t been able to write the same old gratitude. Nothing I say can fully express the depths of pain and the heights of joy that come from receiving the love you’ve shown us.

Dan wrote and emailed me the following post Christmas day. His words and the heart behind them overwhelmed me. If you know my Dan you understand he is the “strong, silent” type, but his rivers run deep and true. He found a new way to say “Thank You” when I cannot.

I volunteered to work today, Christmas Day, as a small sign of how grateful I am to my employer. I was out of paid time off when I requested FMLA for our very open ended trip to Baltimore. They generously paid me for the time while we were in Maryland for Danica’s surgery. My abbreviated five hour shift on one of the slowest days of the year gives me plenty of time to think back on 2016 and offer a husband and father’s perspective on what’s transpired. Monica is the writer in our family, but she’s asked me to write a Christmas letter most years. It brings a new voice and perspective to the one she frequently shares here and on social media. I feel like you could scramble the dates on most letters I’ve written, and it would all still apply except for small nuances. My dad was at the hospital for Danica’s surgery. While hugging me goodbye the day after he said, “It’s been a hard ten years.” It felt strangely good to have someone so close to us validate the decade of extreme difficulty our family has suffered. I’m unable to talk about it most of the time.

When I try to articulate the feelings I find myself back at my favorite Bible verse, II Corinthians 12:10,

“For the sake of Christ, then, I am content with weaknesses, insults, hardships, persecutions, and calamities. For when I am weak, then I am strong.”

The second book of Corinthians is a letter from the Apostle Paul to the church at Corinth. It describes some of the challenges he faced upon his many travels spreading the word of Christ Jesus.

“Five times I received at the hands of the Jews the forty lashes less one. Three times I was beaten with rods. Once I was stoned. Three times I was shipwrecked; a night and a day I was adrift at sea; on frequent journeys, in danger from rivers, danger from robbers, danger from my own people, danger from Gentiles, danger in the city, danger in the wilderness, danger at sea, danger from false brothers; in toil and hardship, through many a sleepless night, in hunger and thirst, often without food,b in cold and exposure. And, apart from other things, there is the daily pressure on me of my anxiety for all the churches.”

Many of you are new readers here, but if you have been following since Monica began old Team Danica blog in early 2010 you will spot a few parallels between Paul’s travels and my ten year journey alongside my wife. Weight training in the gym is my only real “hobby.” The phrase “For when I am weak, then I am strong” has a certain resonance in a simplistic way. My personal weakness is the anger produced from the recurring futile question, “Why is this happening to my family over and over again?” This anger leads to a mental push in the weight room where I’m usually able to dissipate this negative energy before returning home to do what needs to be done. Working out has long been my therapy of choice. But Paul is not referring to physical strength in this passage. Paul is referring to the Grace of spiritual strength to endure.

My family opened our Christmas gifts the day before Christmas. I heard Monica mumbling drowsily around 7 am, “Sounds like the girls are up already.” Immediately this casual observation created a huge warm spot in my heart. I was comforted in realizing our two daughters were safe in our small warm home, and we were all together. Nothing about the holidays this year feels celebratory or nostalgic. Monica, Danica and I are still processing much of the trauma from the surgery and hospital stay. Our usual family Advent worship was non-existent except for our reading of the Christmas story from the book of Luke last night. Delaney has been pushing to finish her semester and exams and feeling cut off in some ways from the hard we lived without her while we were away.

Only a freshman, Delaney is already focusing on post-high school life. I like to believe the independence she has learned being apart from her family many times since Monica’s long hospital stay during her pregnancy with Danica is an asset towards her accomplishing her goals. She sees the world as an adventure but maturely understands planning and hard work are the keys to success. She has a faith in God but knows walking on water is rare and rowing to shore is the usual course. Danica is still recuperating from surgery and will be in a neck brace throughout winter. She will return to school part time at first. Her healing well offers the amazing hope of the most full life she has ever known. Being five years younger than her sister, she still displays the outward affection most teenagers have outgrown. She likes to snuggle and will reach out to hold hands without asking. She is protective of her mother’s feelings and keenly aware of her pain. She will often ask “How are you feeling mommy?” and follow up with a hug. They have a connection that will play out much differently than Delaney and Monica’s relationship. During a particularly painful moment in the hospital Monica said, “She is the bravest person I know,” to which I replied, “It’s like you are looking in a mirror.” I am in awe of them both.

Monica’s health struggles and disability remain and continue to be a source of my weakness and anger. She has been pushing herself since her own emergency fusion just six weeks before Danica’s surgery. She is experiencing unsettling pain on the right side of her skull base. All the signals of an AE/PANDAS flare confirm she needs her next scheduled chemotherapy treatment tomorrow. When her physical condition plummets to these low valleys I am mentally right there alongside her. This is by far our greatest challenge in our relationship. I get my “life” energy from her when we are physically close. As I try to fend off the toll of age by staying as fit as possible, time has ravaged her body. Of prominence is the new long scar on the back of her neck and the way she cannot bend it forward or backward or side to side. I think it makes her look valiant and sophisticated. She has changed significantly since the day we met. I believe God is using her to show us all the true meaning of Grace.

Paul could be blamed for taking pride in all of his extraordinary sufferings in the name of Christ thus possibly placing himself on a pedestal above all other Apostles. But verse nine reads,
“And He said unto me, My grace is sufficient for thee: for My strength is made perfect in weakness. Most gladly therefore will I rather glory in my infirmities, that the power of Christ may rest upon me.”

Matthew Henry’s Commentary notes, “When we are weak in ourselves, then we are strong in the Grace of our Lord Jesus Christ; when we feel that we are weak in ourselves, then we go to Christ, receive strength from Him, and enjoy most the supplies of Divine strength and Grace.”

No one embodies this verse more so than my wife. In weakness Monica receives the strength to care for others. Her thoughtful care packages shipped and received are familiar to many of you. She is always willing to listen to and provide encouragement to others in need. When possible, the experiences from her twenty-four surgical procedures help many patients answer their own medical questions and concerns. She still believes a slow pen to paper letter is the best means of showing one cares. I’ve seen her work through the great loss of a successful career she loved to the humble place of serving through prayer and encouragement instead of doing. Though her persona may change during times of pain, her trust in God rarely lets her outwardly complain. I admire her passion for books, her commitment to reading the Bible often and her time on her knees at her prayer bench. After all these years of marriage, all of the surgeries and scars, when I hug my wife, it feels like my whole world resets and I can continue on. Holding her immediately gives me calm. There is something about her, about us, when we are together we experience true love and even peace.

In contrast to Monica, I seem to do what is required to make it through the day drawing upon Grace in a different way. God’s love demonstrated to us through you is a huge part of His strength being made perfect in my own kind of weakness. A husband and father wants to feel in control. I want to control our wealth, our health and our happiness. I want to have the power to change what is wrong for my wife and my girls. I am committed to the path that is laid out before me, but I go along often times with resentment for that which I cannot control. My Grace comes from those of you who have taken it upon yourselves to help me support my family. Some of you have been helping us faithfully for the past decade of trials. A few of the many recent expressions of love include my aunt’s elaborate hand-made cards accompanied by prayers and support; My brother’s church in Mississippi sending prayer and support; A friend of my sister in-law in West Virginia with no real family of his own sending Holy Spirit led love at the most needed times over the past few years; Friends who have their own serious health concerns like fighting cancer still taking the energy and resources to encourage and share; Those willing to drive anywhere at any time of day to help, especially since Monica cannot drive since her most recent fusion; Those willing to take in our Laney and our Twixie puppy while we traveled to Maryland; A retired couple with a large family of their own who has adopted us as part of their family including us in an “inheritance” of sorts that our parents are unable to provide; Delaney’s tuition to Lake Center being paid year after year by her great-grandmother; The staggering love through donations from your giving and sharing and praying that have literally given Monica and Danica access to the best medical care possible; Cards and gifts from each family in Danica’s class and surprise caroling at our door to cheer us; Meals showing up on our table from people we’ve never met but are praying for us; Christmas gifts under our tree from many who wanted our girls to have some kind of abundance even in our need…All this and so much more has helped me show strength in times of weakness. Your love has been Grace to me.

Monica tries to write an individual note for every act of kindness, but there is really no way to cover them all. I see her heart to never let even one of you think we take your sacrifices and care for granted. Please know how important it is for me to express how grateful I personally am to everyone reading this. Understand how much we appreciate your time, your generous gifts and most of all your prayers for strength and healing. I hope against hope that 2017 will be a year of more normalcy for our family. Although there will be continued recovery for our Danica incuding careful watch over her fusion and regular chemotherapy for Monica indefinitely we are asking God to give us a year without any surgeries. We look forward to sharing breakthroughs of light and life with you so you can feel part of our success enduring and overcoming all the challenges we have faced through Christ Jesus. I am committed to my family, my marriage and whatever is to come no matter what. At the end of the day, when my two daughters are asleep in their cozy rooms across the hall, my wife is snuggling beside me with her Twixie puppy, and I have but a moment to think about my life, I am spiritually moved to give thanks.

Saturday night, New Year’s Eve, Monica and I plan to let Danica stay overnight at her parent’s house and Delaney with a friend, and we will go on a date and have a night alone in our own house. I emailed Monica last week and asked her to marry me again. I know Grace because ten years of hardship that would have broken most marriages and families apart have solidified a kind of fierce and rare love I can scarcely believe exists. I recently told my girls I wouldn’t change one thing about my life, because if one decision, even the seeming missteps and failures, had been different we wouldn’t be here together now. I’ve lost all control over the things the world tells me I’m supposed to be planning and providing for my family. There is no 401K or college funds or even a nest egg. We may never own a home again. Instead I’ve humbly learned to receive and trust and say “Thank you.” I’ve learned this beautiful way of manna living is as much a miracle today as it was the first time it showed up on our doorstep, and I’ll keep waking up each day calling it gift.

This beautiful Nichole Nordeman song has long been on our family playlist. Gratitude. It’s ALL Grace.

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I Will Follow. We Will Follow. A Dan Post

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Family

It’s been quite some time since I’ve written anything for Monica’s blog. I’ve done Christmas letters and year-end reviews for our family in the past. I usually say something hopeful and overused like, “Next year will be our year!” I am finally realizing this is much like making resolutions you know you cannot keep. My outlook for 2015 does not differ much from what transpired in 2014 or the slowly passing years before. This is not pessimism. It is our reality. The coming winter months are the hardest on Monica. We are one in many ways. Most noticeable is I am not okay when she is not okay. I’m forgetting who she was before all this. I’m forgetting who I was. This frightens me. At the same time I realize this leaving behind our early life together and our old selves is the work of Grace. This change may have never happened had it not been for our countless trials stripping us of all we once held dear.

I don’t write often enough but hopefully this post should develop a common thread for you to follow throughout the paragraphs. I do love to tell stories.

When the very first iPad made its debut years ago, I was fortunate to purchase one with the help of a few donated gift cards to a local retailer. Though I’m in the tech industry and an “IT Professional,” I usually get all the electronic hand-me-downs from my wife who in turn gets hers from her parents. I’m typing on her very old laptop that will lose power without notice as the replacement battery failed months ago. The chance to own an iPad was an exciting surprise. Those with an iPad understand it makes an outstanding gaming station for kids, so it quickly became Danica’s iPad. It was loaded with free games and helped pass the long hours in her little “storm trooper” body cage and wheelchair. My intentions were to cherish this first edition iPad forever until Danica dropped it recently on a cement sidewalk. It functions like new but the glass screen is shattered. I loaded up a few hundred family photos and use it as a digital album now. From afar our family pictures look fine but up close you’ll notice the images have jagged wandering lines running through them.

In our great room we have an entire wall dedicated to “print” family portraits. There are twelve framed photos in all. They are all stunning natural light pictures taken by a friend of Monica’s who has gifted her time and efforts over the years capturing these moments for us. Over our mantel is a beautifully framed piece of art. It is a Marc Chagall etching with watercolor of the Prophetess Deborah. A friend of Monicas collects art and loans pieces to us to enjoy. To round out the room we have an old Craftsman bookcase inherited from Monica’s maternal grandmother. Our full glass storm door allowing the warming and healing sun into our home was a present from her parents. Our living room is basically how Monica and I dreamed it would look but with very little from our own efforts. There is not a day we do not feel gratitude for this sense of place after moving from our home and selling most of our possessions to live in her parent’s basement those eighteen months in 2011-2012.

Early in our relationship and marriage our house was our idol. We bought and sold new homes during the real estate boom. Monica loved interior design. We spent much of our time on weekends hunting for the right furniture, rugs and art for a space. While selling one of our last homes in Leesburg, Virginia the couple who purchased it requested a separate transaction to buy almost everything in our house. I believe God took our home from us so decisively to uproot the temptation to ever make a place matter more than one another. We hold things loosely. We know at any moment this could be lost, and we would survive.

Nice cars were another idol I held close. When money was not a concern I would routinely trade in a BMW for a Lexus or an Audi. I bought an SUV so I could tow my waterski boat around D.C. to impress my then girlfriend, Monica. The car I drove was an important outward display of who I thought I was. God stripped me of all this. If it were not for donations, I could not have afforded any type of vehicle the past six plus years. When Danica was first sick, a foreign exchange student Monica’s parents housed was returning to South Korea. He lived with them for years and became like family. He gave us his old Jeep when he left. It did not have working heat, and I drove it back and forth to Fairlawn during the freezing cold. I loved it because of the kindness it represented and hated it because of the humility it was teaching me. The Jeep ran as long as it could. Many months later, a friend of Monica’s donated his 2003 Mazda SUV to us. It was after owning this Tribute for a while, I no longer dreamed of new vehicles. The car simply runs even though you have to start it twice every single time. The kids actually love the cloth interior, and it hauls my cardboard, glass and plastics and yard trimmings to the recycle center. We have had to put money into it for things you would expect in a car this old, but it is faithful. The friend took really good care of the car, and I am extremely grateful for his gift. It is proof that being good stewards of our belongings pays off in the long run.

Taking care of Monica and our girls is an endeavor I now humbly and gratefully share with many people. The expanding network of love that has grown around us because of Monica’s pursuit of telling our story and keeping relationship is staggering. The gifts I mentioned above are only a fraction of what our family has received since our journey began during Monica’s pregnancy with Danica over eight years ago. From across the United States, here in northeast Ohio and even from other countries, we have opened hundreds of cards and motivational letters. We’ve been given contributions to help meet surgical fees and travel costs, prescriptions and never ending medical bills. Most of all we are covered in countless thoughts and prayers of support. It is an immeasurable amount of love that at first was almost too great for a proud husband and father to bear. It slowly began to change me. It taught me about selfless giving and gracious receiving. It also rearranged my dreams about what I might be able to pay forward someday by the Grace of God.

One of my favorite songs is “I Will Follow” from Chris Tomlin. Though the lyrics may seem simple, the message is often times difficult to accept into one’s life. The song represents the duality in my life comparing my relationship with my wife and my relationship with God. When I return home from work I am constantly cleaning the house, vacuuming, grocery shopping, baking cookies, doing yard work or simple car repairs. I gladly welcome it all. Not only because I have been called to do this, but because my best friend in the world, my wife, and my greatest gifts, my daughters, need me.

I sing these words to my wife whom I love:

Where you go, I’ll go
Where you stay, I’ll stay
When you move, I’ll move
I will follow…

I sing these words to my Heavenly Father:

In you there’s life everlasting
In you there’s freedom for my soul
In you there’s joy, unending joy
And I will follow

This is not the life I imagined when Monica and I first met. This is not the life that makes a man proud. I have few personal accomplishments and almost complete dependency on others. This is the life that makes me grateful for my wife, grateful for our girls and grateful for our friends and close family who show God’s love to us over and over again. I am undeserving of this life, but those of you in our network understand what is at stake. Though the memories are cracked, the family pictured on the iPad is worth fighting for.

We have great plans for 2016. We see 2015 as one of maintenance for Monica’s treatments and more healing. Danica’s Spring Cincinnati scans and appointments represent a huge milestone in her recovery, and Delaney will finish 7th grade. We have said this many times, but it bears repeating. We would not be capable of trust and even peace in the face of despair if it were not for all of you. I now understand you are my friends and family too. We cling to hope. We breathe Grace. We are a family fighting our way through what some days feels too hard. Your love is a strong army behind us. One day we hope to give back in part what we have received. We dream of the ways we could use our story to help others on a similar journey. We know for sure nothing is impossible.

You don’t know my wife the way I knew her. There are parts of her story still to be told. You don’t know my wife the way I love her. When I married her I told people she was a fighter. I never imagined how true this was. We are stronger because of the brokenness. We are one because of the shattering and healing. Together we are finding life, freedom and joy as we follow.

Photo by Grace Designs Photography

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