Good-bye April 2011!

There is no polite way to say this...April 2011 sucked.
On April 12, a 17 year old kid walked into the pawn shop where our dear friend Chris Deaver was working, pointed a gun at his head and pulled the trigger. Twice. There is now a four year old little girl who will grow up without a daddy. A young woman who will never get to marry the father of her daughter. A mother who no longer has a son. And countless people who have lost an amazing friend. I still can't begin to wrap my head around what happened and WHY. It makes me sick to my stomach when I think about the "whys" and "hows" and "what ifs." I don't understand why God let this happen but I am beginning to see his plan. Florence banded together after this tragedy in a way that I have never seen. Fundraisers galore have been planned. A trust has been set up for sweet little Morgan. Love has been poured out to the Deaver family. It makes the heart-break just a tiny bit more bearable.
On Easter Sunday Henry woke up with a fever and sore throat. We skipped church but went to Ed's dad's house for lunch. He was the one who noticed that Henry's neck was swollen. After a call to the on-call pediatrician, we wound up in Urgent Care and received a diagnosis of Strep Throat. The doctor checked his neck but said it was swollen glands. By Tuesday morning, his neck was red and hot to the touch and had developed a large knot. We started at the pediatrician's office, headed to the ENT, then to the hospital. By 5:00 that evening, he was in the OR having an abscess drained. We spent three nights in the hospital with a drainage tube in Henry's neck and an IV pumping antibiotics into his arm. He was p.i.t.i.f.u.l. for the first 36 hours but by Thursday evening he was starting to bounce back. By Friday morning when he was released, he was the same ol' Henry. This experience absolutely drained me emotionally & physically. In the end, I am so incredibly grateful and blessed. It was a terrible experience, but I am thankful that it is the worst we have had to endure.