Big Week

Saying that this is a big week for my side of the family is stating something a little too simply. I'm not trying to over-dramatize anything, but really, it's a very eventful and emotional week in several ways.

For instance, yesterday my mom had surgery to remove cancer. Today I'll be spending the day with her, helping her out as she recovers. We won't know if it's completely gone or the results of whether anything had spread to lymph nodes for a week. So we're waiting. We're praying. We're hoping. We're joyful. Her breast cancer was caught early, and we're blessed by the technicians and medical minds that discovered the abnormalities and for the development of mammograms.

Here's my little plug, even though Breast Cancer Awareness Month is over: Get your yearly mammogram. It literally may be the difference between life and death. I believe that it may have been the difference between my mom having a pretty minimally invasive surgery with a few weeks of radiation and a fight for her life.

In two days, my sister is leaving our country to go to her daughter's country. There she, her husband and oldest son will see things that they have never seen before. The most important: the newest member of their family. The baby girl that they have been waiting for, praying for, doting after and gazing at in pictures will be in their arms. Fears of flying, and anxiousness about the whole trip are plentiful, but to finally meet this little one, almost 5 months old now, is too sweet to even grasp. The pain of leaving her there is too heart-wrenching to comprehend.

While there, they will see poverty up close. They will get to understand the land that their daughter comes from better. They will see the orphanage that she is in. They will most likely get to see the church where she was graciously placed to be found. I can only imagine the emotions held in the hearts of my sister's family as their adoption journey continues and is in the final stretch.

So yeah.

Big week.