LAST MEDICINE DAY!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!

Sometimes I wonder how aware Esther is of her circumstances.  Maybe because she's a twin and knows that Zinnia doesn't have to go through what she goes through or maybe she's just incredibly smart for a little four year old girl.  We haven't totally shielded her from what is going on and have talked openly about treatment, many side effects, and that this cancer could come back.  In any case, she knows.  She is aware that her life is different and that it's not supposed to be this way.  A couple days after her broviac was removed, she peacefully prayed with Anthony....

"Father God, thank you that my hair is growing back, thank you that I don't have tubies anymore, thank you that my cancer is all gone.  Please don't ever let me get sick again, please don't make me have to get my tubies in again, and help me not have to stay at the hospital again."

Woah. From a four-year-old.  Yeah, she gets it.

The FIRST thing Esther told me this morning is that today is her "last medicine day." At breakfast, she popped those last two pills her in mouth and swallowed them down with a sip of milk like it was nothing.  And that's that.  She's done taking medicine to kill cancer.  

I am often in awe of the quiet perseverance of this little girl.  Her graceful strength is incredibly beautiful.  God made her ready for this road.  We never told her it was coming; she just knew.  Who knows how long she had been anticipating this day.  I don't know how else to describe it but as faith.  She is peacefully secure in her days, she trusts and hopes, but not with entitlement.  Of course she is also four and struggles when she doesn't get her way, but through all of this, she has taken each days as it has come.  She is an illustration of these verses, when everything is falling apart, she has remained steady.

17 Though the fig tree should not blossom,

nor fruit be on the vines,

the produce of the olive fail

and the fields yield no food,

the flock be cut off from the fold

and there be no herd in the stalls,

18 yet I will rejoice in the Lord;

I will take joy in the God of my salvation.

19 God, the Lord, is my strength;

he makes my feet like the deer's;

he makes me tread on my high places.

Habakkuk 3:17