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On this night five years ago we experienced the scariest hours of our lives. It's been five years, but we remember the details as if they were yesterday. The whirlwind week, that started with a prolonged seizure on a midnight ride in an ambulance and ended with our toddler undergoing surgery to remove a large tumor from her brain, changed us. This week is one where we celebrate the things that God has done for our family, how He provided in ways that surpassed anything we could understand, how He protected Adri from so many things that could have gone wrong, and how He heard our cries and brought healing to our first-born. This is our Ebenezer stone kind of week.
1 Samuel 7:12-14 says:
Samuel then took a large stone and placed it between the towns of Mizpah and Jeshanah. He named it Ebenezer (which means "the stone of help"), for he said "Up to this point the Lord has helped us!" So the Philistines were subdued and didn't invade Israel again for some time. And throughout Samuel's lifetime, the Lord's powerful hand was raised against the Philistines. The Israelite villages near Ekron and Gath that the Philistines had captured were restored to Israel, along with the rest of the territory that the Philistines had taken. And there was peace between Israel and the Amorites in those days.
Ebenezer means "stone of help" and this marker was placed there to serve as a reminder of God's very real and divine help to Israel against the Philistines. Never in our lives have we felt the presence of God so real as we did in January of 2010. These dates on the calendar stir up so much emotion and make us pause and reflect and thank God. We have a literal jar of stones displayed in our living room of events that have defined us, and this is one of those events.
This morning I got to squeeze the neck of my friend whose home we were visiting when we had to call 911 that night. We love their family dearly and feel so thankful that we have shared a lot of happy memories together since that scary night five years ago. Authentic, live-giving community is one of the greatest blessings that Josh and I have. This week we will spend a lot of time thanking God for the people who walked through those difficult days with us.
Today, and every day, we are thankful for Adri and for the beautiful reminder we have of God's real and divine presence in our lives. He is our ever-present help. It's a good time for us to stop and remember that, because we are still adjusting to our newest addition - a 4 year-old girl who has been with us for 10 days now. I will introduce L in a future post, but today we are thanking God for her beautiful big sister and the goodness of God that we get to experience through her.
