Everyone loves to win.  That’s why World Cup Soccer makes no sense.  I mean, a tie… really!?  Anyhow, in this journey we find ourselves on, we’ve already decided that we would celebrate the victories – whether big or small.  Honestly, celebrating isn’t too difficult in the life of a five year old, but it is a bit challenging in the current circumstances.  The days can be long and slow and the pace of Cole’s normal life has changed radically.  We’ve come to grips (but not sure he has) that there is going to have to be a new normal for us… at least for a while.

Yesterday we celebrated our first venture outside the confines of our room in his new wheelchair.  Having the epidural removed allowed for us to take a journey and allowed Cole to see the rest of the floor he’s been staying on.  And Children’s has some great views of downtown Birmingham, the Vulcan statue, Red Mountain, train tracks and the new ballpark.  It was a small victory and even though we had to trailer an IV pump along for the ride, at least we were able to have a brief ride.

The celebration was short-lived and then we were back to the confines of the hospital bed and room.  For whatever reason, Cole had a very difficult night last night sleeping.  I’m guessing it had to do with losing some of the medication and pain blocking the epidural was delivering and being changed from IV to oral medication.  But even that was a small victory (although it was hard to celebrate in the wee hours of the morning).

Then today marked an eventful day in our journey.  Just after three nights and four days post-surgery, Cole was discharged from Children’s Hospital.  We counted this as a pretty big victory.  We said goodbye to the staff that took good care of us and loaded up the wheelchair for a ride to the car.  We stopped along the way to see some sights and say goodbye to the place that had become our short-term home.

Being able to secure Cole into the car and have a ride was great freedom and a victory!  But it proved a bit too much celebrating I guess as Cole slept the whole ride to our Birmingham home.  But even the nap was a victory!  So we’re settled in here with Brooke’s family and looking forward to our next victory to celebrate.  There will be defeats and bumps along the way, but we’ll keep looking forward.  After all, we got to put another big “X” on the calendar.

Thinking theologically, this seems very reminiscent to our faith journey.  It’s often the bumps and defeats along the way that stand out – or maybe the difficultly of a section of our journey, but how important to celebrate the victories big and small.  I’m sure more often than not, the majority of the victories are small ones, but they are victories none the less.  That’s the process of sanctification.  I’m fully convinced we’ll look back and simply celebrate that by God’s grace we were able to take four steps forward!  We cling to the promise of Philippians 1:6, that “He who began a good work in you will be faithful to bring it to completion.”

So we’re committed to finding joy in this journey and celebrating along the way.  Much like life, the days (and nights for that matter) can be long, but we cling to the promise that joy comes in the morning… or afternoon… or early evening.  If we keep our eyes open – we’ll see that joy and celebrate it when it’s granted to us!