Visit to see Clay

Today Chris Jordan, myself, Zach, and Andy went to Birmingham to visit Clay in the hospital. It was a great time. We were only able to get back to his room for about 20 min because of the ICU rules. What time we had was such a blessing. As soon as we walked in we all sort of broke down. Clay was sitting up and breathing just fine. There is still a good deal of pain from the surgery and he's still "learning" how to breathe and trust his lungs. The 20 min. we were in there was the longest I had been around Clay without him coughing in quite a long time. There was one point when he stopped, closed his eyes, and took several deep breaths with no problem. His mom joked that he was just showing off. What he was really doing was being a blessing to all of us and showing off the power of God.

Clay is still struggling emotionally. The medicine he is on makes him very anxious and jittery. He's having a hard time sleeping and trusting his lungs. He's simply not used to breathing normally (which is something I hope we never take for granted again!). The doctors are hopeful that he can move out of his ICU room into a regular room in a day or so. He's up walking around once or twice a day also.

Continue to pray for Clay's emotional and spiritual strength as well as his physical recovery. Clay is one of the most godly guys I know and knows his Bible as well as anyone. This is where his knowledge and application of that knowledge meet. Let's pray that God will continue to grow Clay in trusting what he knows.

His dad told me that it's easy for all of us to be so excited for him and his transplant. But we all need to remember that this will be a huge emotional and physical change that will come with a lot of time. Speaking of his parents, Wayne and Judy are doing great! They couldn't be more excited.

One last quick note... Wayne told me that throughout all of the years that they've dealt with CF he's always trusted God's timing. He never once prayed that God would "give us lungs now." He knew that for Clay to get lungs, it meant that someone else would be losing their life. So Wayne simply trusted God. Last Thursday night Clay was at the point where he said, "I can't do this anymore dad. I'm tired." It was then that Wayne and Clay cried out to God and said, "Lord, we need these lungs now. Please help us!" The lungs came on Saturday night and the surgery was Sunday morning! Simply AMAZING!!!

Tell me there's no God.