1 Peter 1:6-7

⁶ In all this you greatly rejoice, though now for a little while you may have had to suffer grief in all kinds of trials. ⁷ These have come so that the proven genuineness of your faith—of greater worth than gold, which perishes even though refined by fire—may result in praise, glory and honor when Jesus Christ is revealed.

This morning has been hard. If you have been following along since June 15th, you know Derek was given the diagnosis of an incomplete T-6 spinal cord injury. When you have a spinal cord injury, obviously the swelling and trauma to the spine will decrease more each week. They say most patients really won't know the extent of their injuries until they are 6-12 months out from the accident.Although mobility may increase or decrease over a period of those months, it is still important to check do bi-weekly checks to see if there has been any changes.

 Since we are 9 weeks out from the accident, they did a test this morning which evaluates his progress. Unfortunetly, we learned his abilities actually leave him as a complete spinal cord injury.The differences between complete and incomplete is essentially the total damage done to the cord. Although people have walked again after a complete injury, it is incredibly rare and essentially a nail in the coffin of our walking dreams. This is incredibly disappointing for both of us.

The injury itself occured at the T-6 level but he is currently functioning more as a T-4. This means the damage is not just focused in the T-6 area which has caused him to feel nothing below the nipple line. We had a good cry about it this morning and are both feeling a bit heavy today.

Honestly, I had a blog written about his process for getting a wheel chair and other exciting things but I just can't do it right now. I literally can't focus on much more than not ugly crying in front of Derek's new roommate. Please pray we will swallow this news with grace. Obviously we still have so much to be thankful for and news could have been much worse. Derek has truly come SO far and I am so thankful he is still his quirky self. But ouch. We are just feeling a little down.

With Love,

The Lavenders