It tis the New Year and while I am a tad late in posting this I am sure it’s meaning is still relevant.
As most of us know Jennifer has remained hospitalized during this holiday season fighting a recent GVHD (graft versus host rejection) which caused pnemonia that she simply had no immune system to fight. Over the weekend Jennifer has shown improvement with not having run a fever for over 72 hours and the severity of her cough less severe.
The next step for Jennifer is a “mini boost” of additional bone marrow from our brother Gene. The hopes are that this will aide in her immune system developing.
As I personally reflect on the past year and the new year, it’s thoughts of my sister that are foremost in my mind. I am most grateful for her spirit, her tenacity in the face of such adversities and her unwielding faith. I am honored to call her my sister. I am blessed that I was able to make the trip to Ohio during the holidays to spend time with her, as short as it was.
We are grateful for the outpouring of support from so many near and far, that have not only emotionally and spiritually lifted Jennifer and her family, but have reached into their pockets to support the family fianancially. There will never be enough words to say thank-you.
I know the rest of the Linnabary, Cline and extended family and friends are in the same place in being grateful to have Jennifer in our lifes and to enrich us in so many ways. We would only hope that she recovers quickly to also torment us in the ways that only she knows best.
2012 is filled with hope and again my thoughts turn to my sister and her family. Hope that Jennifer is able to bounce back from this setback and move forward in her quest to touch even more lifes. I know that she aches to return to work and the clients that she misses so much as well as the new ones that she hopes to help. We all pray that the mini boost is the exact medicine needed to get her back on track.
As we usher in this near year I am minded of the limbs of the family tree I am tracing in that they are far reaching and we never know what the next search will find. Life is like that – if you open your mind and eyes, you see new things every single day. You learn to appreciate the small things and not to “sweat the small stuff”. The final stanza from one of my favorit poems from Percy Shelley says it best. Through out the poem Shelley battles with a strange power that enters into a human and keeps coming and going. The question of where the strange power has gone in answered in this final stanza:
