February 20, 2006

My dear brothers and sisters in Christ,

Over the weekend, several of Lydia's good friends came to visit her. This made her happy.

The oncologist called Saturday that they think there may be a tumor left over from last surgery. Although neurosurgeon strongly disagreed with it (they said they saw it during the operation and that was just tissue inflammation), but all the radiologist and third party radiologist (second opinion) went along with the same conclusion that something is there. We have a special MRI scheduled this Wednesday, and hope to get more information about the suspected tissue. Second surgery is in consideration if coming MRI does not show some positive results.

Lydia wetted the bed last night. She never did that since her toddler age, not even during her hospital stay. That got us worried quite a bit.

Again, I had to pray very hard to calm down myself and get peaceful mind.

While Esther went to Youth Retreat over the weekend, and I and grandma went out to get some errands done. Deborah mentioned to mom that she felt she was "excluded" recently. Priscilla also expressed her frustration. Considering Deborah is only 1.5 years older than Lydia, and Priscilla 2 years younger, I was still very shocked and angry and ashamed. Similar struggles happened on Saturday afternoon and again Sunday night. I thought (I simply assumed) that my other children will be OK, they will understand.. NOT SO. Lydia was there too. This made her very sad and hid herself in bed and cried. It was very difficult for all of us. We had to kneeled down to pray that God give us strength. We are all weak, we are not immune from many things which had happened to many other people. I can pretend we are doing OK. But that was not true. And that does not help. We need to ask for God’s mercy.. And only Him can help us to go through this.

Lydia has tried to play piano and cello over the weekend. It’s been very rusty, wrong notes, and out of tune. But it’s still very beautiful music to me. I was amazed how much she could do. Thank our Lord.

In Him,

Simon