I was diagnosed with cancer last week, an "accidental" discovery while our family has been coping with a pretty awful case of Norovirus. Life is complicated for us right now, but not for God.

Please pray with us for complete health restoration and continuing peace.

Some are asking for health details. We are happy to be transparent while respecting that some people will skim to the end or just skip the rest. That is a-okay! Thank you for your simple but faith-filled prayers. And if you are someone who wants more info, keep reading. It feels like there is some catching up to do right now but hope future updates will be more brief. 

Asking for and receiving help are not easy. That is the vulnerable place where we find ourselves. We've been reminded that God calls people to intersect with love, sacrifice and a posture of availability to His prevailing purposes.  

Thank you for monitoring the volunteer options. Someone (probably Lisa or Alex) will update the meals and to-do list with more specific needs and dates as soon as we have the surgery schedule and know what to expect for recovery. 

We appreciate your patience and support so much!

Carly is living her best life right now, by God's mercy and miracles! After some prolonged periods of extreme staff shortages, she currently has a wonderful team of young women around her for daily caregiving and companionship. Truly, wonderful people — a couple of college students, two young women doing "gap year" type things, and a nurse picking up occasional shifts too. These women are gifts from the very hand of God to Carly and our family. 

Carly also became an AUNT in April 2025! She and her nephew are very observant of each other and becoming great friends. He lives just 10 blocks away so we're very excited to take lots of walks together this summer and meet at the park as often as possible. 

In general, Carly's health has been stable for more than a year, though we are constantly managing gastro-intestinal problems and mental health. It's a daily, sometimes hour-to-hour monitoring and management. She went through an extreme and quite scary season of weight loss, sleep problems, and medication side effects in late 2022 into 2024. We were, quite literally, at our wits end by February 2024 after every medical provider, including multiple visits to the Mayo Clinic, had run out of ideas! Then one new medication miraculously helped her sleep (after 25 years of almost NO SLEEP for all three of us). To say we were relieved is a gross understatement. Most of her other health issues have been gradually improving since June 2024. 

During one of her doctor appointments last week there was a red flag when we discovered she's losing weight again without explanation. So, we're making more medication adjustments again. This week, we initiated a tweak and are asking God to make that adjustment fast and easy for her. We're praying she's back on track before we travel for my nephew's wedding at the end of March. 

Any of you who know us understand that self care and SOUL care are high priorities for Larry and me. We encourage, teach and coach that with other caregivers every day through Walk Right In Ministries. We personally understand the toll that complex and long term caregiving can take. And we're increasingly intimate with how years of sleep deprivation and stress can impact things like coritsol levels, inflammation, autoimmune function and other health issues. We have been extremely fortunate to be in partnership through these years of caregiving and consider it a privilege to have Carly with us. But the truth is, even if we wanted options, there are few to none for a situation like Carly's. And any future housing options Carly might have take years to put in place and will require creativity and immense support from her community. 

So, where does all of this leave us?

With genuine joy and gratitude, Larry and I will say that it currently leaves us right here — at home enjoying life as "the three of us." Yet, as we age and as we continue to pray through future scenarios and possibilities, we are increasingly reliant on having robust support from our family, friends and church community. We don't entirely know what that looks like in this upcoming season but we have been sensing God is telling us to share our situation. 

Our first big clue (or nudge) came last May when Larry had a heart attack. Thanks be to God he is recovering very well. He had a setback in October when he unexpectedly needed a stent placed. But he's healed strong since then and continues in cardiac rehab. There have been too many interruptions to his maintaining that schedule though so we appreciate prayers that he can stay on track with that and the lifestyle changes we both increasingly require to stay strong. 

Now I come to the latest, perhaps most suprising development, in our crazy caregiver part of this journey. 

I've been generally feeling "unwell" for a while. Visits to multiple doctors over the last couple of years have often left me feeling like a paranoid caregiver paying too much attention to the statistics about caregiver fatigue. It's a much longer story than anyone wants or needs to read here. Just bear with me for a moment while I provide enough background to underscore the significance of what God has mercifully done in the last few days. 

I have had three significant GI episodes since my 60th birthday on January 21st. The latest bout landed me in urgent care and then the ER last Friday. By Saturday afternoon, tests were positive for Norovirus. However, because there was initial suspicion about pancreatitis (which I've had twice before), they also did bloodwork and a CT scan. The scan showed a lesion. Fast forward through that last week. Here's what we know now:

There is so much good news despite how this is turning our lives upside down this spring. There simply isn't time or energy right now to tell all the "little" stories of the big ways God has been moving in the last several days, It's been a lot of HARD. But Carly's team as well as her sister and brother-in-law have picked up so much slack! And our cleaning lady came today. (How awesome it feels to have surroundings organized and peaceful, let alone DECONTAMINATED OF NOROVIRUS!) I might be the only person in history to claim "Norovirus is my friend."

Just like with Larry's heart attack, this situation reminds us how intertwined everything about our lives is with Carly's disabilities. It reveals how utterly reliant we are on the Lord God. And it demonstrates the vulnerability, beauty and transforming power of being COMMUNITY together.

2 CORINTHIANS 4
6 For God, who said, “Let light shine out of darkness,” made his light shine in our hearts to give us the light of the knowledge of God’s glory displayed in the face of Christ. 7 But we have this treasure in jars of clay to show that this all-surpassing power is from God and not from us. 8 We are hard pressed on every side, but not crushed; perplexed, but not in despair; 9 persecuted, but not abandoned; struck down, but not destroyed. 10 We always carry around in our body the death of Jesus, so that the life of Jesus may also be revealed in our body... 

16 Therefore we do not lose heart. Though outwardly we are wasting away, yet inwardly we are being renewed day by day. 17 For our light and momentary troubles are achieving for us an eternal glory that far outweighs them all. 18 So we fix our eyes not on what is seen, but on what is unseen, since what is seen is temporary, but what is unseen is eternal.

DEUTERONOMY 31:6
So be strong and courageous! Do not be afraid and do not panic before them. For the Lord your God will personally go ahead of you. He will neither fail you nor abandon you.