Many of you remember the experiment we entered into a few months ago when Dr. Weinhouse, Julia’s cardiologist, took her off of her heart medicine. He decided to see her again at the end of the summer instead of the customary six months, just to make sure that his decision was a good one.

We are always glad for an opportunity to see our friend sooner than later, so Jocelyn and I spent the summer watching Julia’s progress and looked forward to seeing how she fared without the meds that we had thought were going to be needed indefinitely.

It was a strange feeling I had the night before her visit. I’m not sure where it came from, but I got the urge to pray for a good report. I kept going between thinking everything was going to be okay and nagging feeling that heart issues often have very subtle symptoms.

That night, I lit up my Twitter and Facebook community asking them to pray for a good report. I gotta tell you that this is one great group of people who have been so faithfully praying for our family, including a worldwide prayer vigil before her surgery. I honestly don’t know how we could have gotten through this without them.

We went in yesterday morning for the weigh-in (over eighteen pounds now!) and the initial exam. It was so great to see the staff again. They all recognized her and most remembered her name. But it was the echocardiogram that was going to be the real test. Within minutes, Dr. Weinhouse’s face burst into a smile as he said, “WOW! Contractility of 75-80! She is doing fantastic!”

We would find out later that contractility is the heart’s ability to push the blood out, but we didn’t need to know the numbers to understand what was going on. Julia’s heart was working fine without the meds.

So we celebrated and prayed together as always, but I honestly felt a note of bittersweetness at the thought of not seeing our friend as often.

I’ll leave you another prayer request as a postscript. As we walked into the office that morning, reasonably confident that our family was on the other side of this challenge, we saw another family at the beginning of their journey. The parents sat huddled together, a tiny baby on mom’s chest. They nervously shared whispers of half-hearted encouragement as she cuddled the baby and dad cuddled her.

I don’t know their names and we may never know their story; even though I told Dr. Weinhouse to give them our name and number if they needed encouragement. But I saw a very familiar look of stiff-jawed dread on that father’s face. He was right where I was almost a year ago as I searched through every personal and emotional asset for a way to face the coming storm. Fortunately, I had a constellation of friends around me, prophetically reminding me of the comfort God offers for those who are crushed in spirit.

Please pray for that little family at the beginning of their journey, that God would give them the full measure of the encouragement that he gave us.

Thanks so much for your prayers!