Today marks one year since Lonna's cancerous tumor was discovered.  We have so much to be thankful for during this unplanned journey!

Since our last update, in January, Lonna had to have a second surgery since her first surgery was not healing well.  This delayed her radiation a bit, but the three weeks of daily radiation started, and is now done!  In February, she completed her radiation and praise the Lord, her body handled it fairly well.  There were side effects, but for the most part she handled it about as well as we could have hoped for.  There were some rough days at the end of radiation as she was also doing her second series of chemo at the same time.  By God's grace, we are past that season.  In this past year, Lonna had her first round of chemo, two surgeries, radiation, and now, Lord willing, she is on her last series of chemo (once every three weeks) which should complete by end of September.

We are so thankful to the Lord for all who have been praying for us over this past year and supporting us in many ways.  I truly believe God has answered those prayers in many ways, one being giving us a peace that can only come from Him. 

Our hope is not in the outcome of this cancer, but in the Creator who created and redeemed Lonna, who made her perfectly in his image, and exactly how he wanted.  We pray the cancer is gone and will never come back, but more than that, we pray that our Lord Jesus Christ would be glorified by our lives no matter how long we are on this earth.  God continues to impress this on my heart when I focus too much on Lonna's physical outcome and miss all that He is doing and all that he is teaching me, mostly complete dependence on Him alone.  

 Philippians 4:19 And my God will supply every need of yours according to His riches in glory in Christ Jesus. 

To see the joy that is on Lonna's face no matter how she is feeling from day to day has been an encouragement to me.  I thoroughly enjoyed sitting next to my wife, Lonna, in church again starting a few weeks ago and I know she was beaming when she was able to worship our Lord together with the body of Christ. 

I give thanks to the Lord that He has given her what she needs to journey through this past year without losing her joy!