Doing Great...

Dear Friends,
I hope everyone is doing well! Reagan is progressing and healing quickly and we are very grateful for her progress! God is really taking great care of her and of us and we owe all the praise to Him! The last few days, she has really perked up and seems to be getting healthier every day. The Doctors are considering taking her off of the ventilator again late this week and I believe that she will do well without it! Her settings are fairly low now and she seems to be getting stronger each day! Thank you God! I am very thankful for this experience over all as the Lord has really worked in the life of our little family, as well as scores of other people. He has been so good to us throughout this process thus far and I have great faith that He will continue to help us over the next few months and continually throughout the years to come. I'm not sure how one would cope with circumstances such as these without God to help them through. As I was walking down the hall of the hospital with Amy the other night, there were two ladies, one standing on each side of the hallway, talking. Right as we passed between them, one of the ladies looked at the other and said something like "I am so glad that I know Jesus." I immediately looked at her, said "me too" with a big smile, and continued walking down the hall. No more needed to be said as we both had a big grin on our face and knew exactly what the other one was going through, without any specifics. I am thankful today that I do know Jesus and that He listens to our prayers and cares about us. He has been closer than ever in my life and I love Him today for His provision not only for Reagan, but for His provision for my life so that I can spend eternity with Him. I'd like to share a story with you about one of our experiences with God during this process and hope that it will deepen your faith in Him as it did ours....

Two weeks ago today, Reagan was doing great. She was eating well, breathing incredibly well, and seemed to be developing stronger and stronger with each day. We had experienced many emotions throughout this process as every day seemed to bring us different news of her condition. It seemed like each time that she started doing well, something came along to slow her progress. Many people have described it as 2 steps forward and 1 back. That is the way it felt. Well, this time was no different. We walked in one day and Reagan was doing awesome. The very next day, she seemed very, very tired and was found to have two infections in her body. Just when it seemed like she was making a turn for better, her condition worsened. As we looked through the glass of her isolet during these days, spunky little Reagan suddenly had only enough energy to lift her pointer finger. Now I don't know why God allows sickness and seemingly bad things to happen sometimes, but I do know that He was faithful to either help the situation, or to help us have the grace and patience to deal with our circumstances. By Tuesday night, Amy and I were both worn out and needed a touch from God. As we laid in bed that night praying, I recalled my morning devotions that I had with a couple of good friends. During our prayer time that morning we prayed specifically about things that were going on in our lives and in our businesses. We decided that during our prayer time that evening, we were going to pray specifically for two of Reagan's needs...

Reagan had been struggling with her CO2 output and her levels were in the 80's during the day, so we prayed that God would help her levels to get back down below 67by the next morning. When we called that morning, her CO2 levels were around 53 if I remember correctly. We were quite thrilled!

The other problem that Reagan was having was her urine output. It seemed that she was getting quite bloated from fluid buildup and we knew that she really needed to urinate! As we were praying, I asked Amy if Reagan could pee 4 cc's. (We are all friends here and ya'll know that I did not ask Amy if Reagan could urinate 4 cc's....so let's just call it pee!) Amy said that she could easily do that so I increased it to 10 to give a specific number to God. So, we prayed for 10 cc's or more of pee by the next morning. We just needed to know that God was with us during this process and that He was hearing our prayers. You can deal with a lot of things in your life when you know that God is with you! After praying, we slept! The next morning, we found out that Reagan had several diapers with minimal amounts of pee during the night. But...around 9am we received a phone call that she had a diaper that had not 5cc's, not 6,7,8, or 9 cc's, but, yep, you guessed it 10 cc's of pee! Now I do believe that coincidences happen at times, but this was no coincidence. As if that was not enough, later that afternoon, Reagan again had her diaper changed, and once again, it contained exactly 10 cc's of pee!!! We needed to know that God was with us and He showed us that He would be with us throughout the process. It was the calming hand of Almighty God saying to us... "Robert and Amy, I love you both and just want you to know that I do care about you and I care about Reagan. I am with you today, and will be tomorrow, and the day after that, and so on, until we meet together in Heaven where we will be together forever. I am watching over you and know exactly what is going on with you all every second of every day." At that moment in our lives, God gave us enough! What a pivotal moment! Not only did God answer our prayer, He answered us twice! I strongly feel that He wanted to remind us a second time later in the day that He was there.

Well, that's the story. God has His hands in the lives of our little family and He surely has His hands in your life as well! We don't know what tomorrow holds, but we do know He who holds tomorrow and that He will be with us! Thank you so much for praying for us! We are so grateful for people that care and are willing to pray. We love you all!

Prayer Requests:
1. Pray for continued healing for her body and no infections or other illness.
2. Pray for her lungs to be supernaturally strong by the time that they take her off of the ventilator.
3. Amy and I have several unspokens that we would like for you to pray about for us!

Robert, Amy, and Baby Reagan

P.S. DAD, Congratulations on making it through to April 15th!(for those of you that don't know, my dad is an income tax accountant)...Oh, shoot, I need to call him to file my extension, gotta go :)