One year.

Today, it’s been one year since Eva’s accident.

It feels both like it’s been 10 days and 10 lifetimes.

I’m not sure what the next year holds. Every day I pray for Eva to be healed in Jesus’ name, but every day until that point, is still uncharted waters.

I do know we can only go uphill from here. After experiencing losing 99% of my incredible daughter’s spark and personality to a freak accident, after spending almost exactly half of this past year (178 days) in the hospital, and after Lindsay almost dying from a sudden infection while we were out of the country (and another 10 days in hospitals), I’m believing things can only get better from here.

I don’t see the light at the end of the tunnel yet, but every day the Lord sustains us is one day closer to that light, closer to healing and celebration.

Even though it would be easier to hope for something less, I still don’t feel any kind of release from God to not continuing praying for Eva’s full and complete healing. This doesn’t mean I’m not embracing all of who she is now, but I also believing God has a miraculous plan for her in the future.

Compared to a year ago, my faith feels both the strongest it’s ever been and the weakest it’s ever been. It’s been a year of drowning in hope, pain, peace, fear, joy, anger, doubt, life, friendships, and confusion, all to levels of intensity I’ve never experienced before.

I keep trying to adjust to a new “normal” but am learning that normal now simply seems to be the fact that there is no normal. Every day is a different challenge and a different joy. Every day is a new level of sadness for my baby girl and new level of peace that God blesses me with. Every day is new despair and new hope.

We keep following the advice of Eva’s neurosurgeon, which he gave us moments after finishing the operation on her brain: Take it one day at a time.

So we continue to pray for healing, enjoy the moments of being with Eva, be grateful for the times spent with our family and close friends, and look to the Lord for daily hope, strength, and peace. #ontothenextone      -Dugan