Pray for Ella

Rick here. Sometimes in life, what you see is not always what it appears. That is the case with this picture. Although she is smiling and looks great to us, Ella is not doing great. We just love the picture and wanted to post it because we are thankful. We acknowledge that we have so much to be thankful for – Ella is peaceful, content, her wound is healing fine, her doctors and nurses have been excellent and we’re making friends with other parents in the NICU. All these things we are thankful to God for and recognize them as blessings from Him.

However, Ella is not eating well. Several weeks ago, she was doing great and we had our hopes on going home soon. Then, for some reason, she just stopped taking a bottle and she had to go back to being fed by the feeding tube more frequently. Now we are at a place where she is only eating well every once in a while – way too inconsistent for any of us to be comfortable. The doctors are now talking to us about Ella having to go through another surgery to put a feeding tube into her stomach (called a G-buttom). This would allow us to go home – however, we want her to go home without a feeding tube and no surgery. The surgery would have additional complications due to the fact that she has had the omphalocele surgery.

We understand that God is God. He can do whatever He wants and doesn’t even have to explain why. We trust Him. And if He wants her to have another surgery for this G-button, we will submit to that and praise Him for being God. However, we don’t want this to be His will. We are pleading with Him to have Ella get better without the surgery. We are begging Him to open Ella’s mouth and give her the desire, ability and strength to eat full bottles every time.

We are asking all who read this blog (pass this on to anyone who will pray) to join us in praying that Ella start eating well every time. Her feeding times are 3:00, 6:00, 9:00 and 12:00 am and pm. We want so bad for God to be glorified through her eating well. We want there to be no doubt that God changed her eating habits. We want everyone to know that there is a God and He is good. We know that is the case no matter what happens with her eating habits.

It is times like this that I wish I understood God but it is also times like these that I am so thankful I serve a God who is so big, there is nobody who can grasp everything about Him. What a small God we would serve if we understood everything about Him…If His answer was always “Yes” and we never got to see Him bring good out of tough situations. We serve a Huge God!

Thank you for praying for our family. Please continue.