The latest

Hello to all of our good friends and family members!

I thought that although many of you already know I should email
you all to make sure I have left nobody out. Very sadly Madison
had to be taken back in for additional open heart surgery last
night. When the Doctor opened her chest and started working he
started having problems working with the vessels because the tissue
in them was abnormal. The surgery which was supposed to take 4 to
6 hours lasted 9 hours and then she spent the entire night in the
CICU fighting for her life but having problem after problem. This
morning things started to look up when she started to stabalize but
it was short lived and within a matter of minutes she was crashing
and her heart, kidneys, and liver were all failing.

Ryan and I had to make a difficult decision about how much
suffering our baby girl should have to go through and let me assure
you it was a very difficult decision and one that we both felt God
was giving us the answer to. Athough they could have put her back
on the heart & lung bypass machine she had so much vessel disease
that they didn't see any way to fix the problem in the long term.
After watching her suffer and listening to what God had been
telling us we knew that it was OK to say goodbye and to let her go
without anymore pain & suffering.

I have never felt so much pain throughout my entire body at
having to make this choice but I believe that she is now in a much
better place where she can have that perfect body that she
deserves. At the end we were allowed to hold her to say good bye
and that is what we did. Slowly after we spoke to her and told her
it was Ok that we would see her in another time and place she
passed away peacefully. I don't know how we will ever possibly
overcome the grief that we are entrenched in at this time but I
know that just as he gave us the strength to let her go he will
give us the strength to make through this time. Minute by minute
and then maybe hour by hour. He will give us the strength that we
need.

All night as I prayed I kept one verse in mind that says "Do not be
afraid, do not be discouraged, for the Lord your God is with you,
he will NEVER leave you or forsake you." I don't know why this one
verse kept coming to mind because to be honest when I was praying
all these months I had such a feeling of peace that God had
everything under control and then all of a sudden it didn't seem
like he was listening to any of our many prayers at all. But I
know that it's not true...with this verse he was reminding me that
he was still there and he was taking care of things. Although they
definitely were not in the way I would have chosen I do have that
same sense of peace that I originally had about where she is now.
I just keep praying now that we will somehow overcome our
tremendous pain.

I hope you all know what a blessing it has been to our family to
have such a strong group of support and prayer warriors on our
side. Even though it is hard to understand how God answered our
prayers I truly believe that he did in the way that he knew was
best. Please continue to keep our family in your prayers as we
struggle through this difficult process. Especially Tyler and
MAtthew as they are having a very difficult time understanding how
this could have happened.

My last request is that you forward this email to the many people
you know that have been praying for us. Unfortunately I do not
have the email adresses or even know the names of the thousands of
people who have been praying but I want them all to know what a
blessing they have been to us and how much we appreciate each and
every one.

Love and Blessing always,

Ryan, Jessica, Tyler, and MAtthew

>>My brothers birthday is on December 13th
>>and I would like to do something for him but
>>I'm not quite sure what, if anybody has any
>>ideas let me know. Also the funeral will be on
>>Tuesday December 14th at the Westminster
>>Church of the Nazarene on 104th and Federal.
>>More information as I get it.