The Burns Journal | February 2023

The Water Receded

who to call on when there's nowhere to go

“…I have planned this in order to display my glory.”

…so the Israelites camped there as they were told.

…As Pharaoh approached, the people of Israel looked up and panicked when they saw the Egyptians overtaking them. They cried out to the Lord, and they said to Moses, “Why did you bring us out here to die in the wilderness? Weren’t there enough graves in Egypt? What have you done to us?”

…But Moses told the people, “Don’t be afraid. Just stand still and watch the Lord rescue you today. The Egyptians you see today will never be seen again. The Lord himself will fight for you. Just stay calm.”

…The cloud settled between the Egyptian and Israelite camps. As darkness fell, the cloud turned to fire, lighting up the night. But the Egyptians and Israelites did not approach each other all night. Then Moses raised his hand over the sea, and the Lord opened up a path through the water with a strong east wind. So the people of Israel walked through the middle of the sea on dry ground, with walls of water on each side!”

–Exodus 14, excerpts

It took me a couple weeks to find the words.

Benaiah’s brain MRI in December showed so much improvement. NONE of the doctors are recommending surgery anymore. The fluid collected around his brain and his arachnoid cysts are almost totally resolved. He has healthy brain developing forward into the spaces where fluid had accumulated. He’s babbling, crawling, standing up, meeting or even exceeding his milestones, and we’re weaning him off his medication.

Lord, I don’t know what to say.

I didn’t dare hope for this, but you have done it. Chief of Medicine, you have stepped in and treated my baby’s brain with delicate healing in your hands.

I was helpless. There was nothing I could do but ask you to have mercy on him. I cried out in terror and unbelief and you stepped in with power and compassion for my little son and his brokenness. You didn’t have to, but you were able, and you leveraged that power for our small story...

Updates

Our aviation leadership is still working on the plan and timeline for our family to step back into flight ministry.

The neurologist wants to see Benaiah after his MRI in April and once again in June, but he feels comfortable with us moving forward into overseas ministry after that. (YAYYYY!) Here’s the monkey wrench: all of our field’s check pilots are planning to be on furlough in the USA this summer, so there’s no one to take Cody through his in-country training in the Kodiak.

The tentative next step for us is: move to Ethnos360 Aviation in Arizona so Cody can renew his currency and do some flight work in the Kodiak simulator. We hope to head back to Papua New Guinea when an instructor is available to check Cody out on the airstrips there, and there may be a way to work that out by working alongside one of the other aviation ministries in the country.

The details aren’t quite ironed out yet, but we’re excited to see how the Lord carries us through these next steps.

Pray for our family as we face these extra transitions. Moving is not easy, so pray for extra grace, patience, and a good sense of humor as we repeat that process a lot over this next year or so.

Benaiah had his urologic surgery on the 16th and he’s recovering well. The eye appointment his neurologist referred us to went great! His eye muscles are actually working and coordinating well (thank you, Lord!), he just looks cross-eyed sometimes (pseudostrabismus) because of the shape of his baby nose and eyelid skin. Hilarious.

We’re down to a half-dose of Benaiah’s brain medicine and he seems to be tolerating the weaning process. We’ve had a couple scares with high fevers, but so far they’ve all been related to sinus or ear infections. We’ll decrease his dose again in 2 weeks, and we plan to take him off medication completely in March.

Please pray that his April MRI will continue to show improvement. We will never get over how far he has come and all the healing the Lord has given him, even without brain surgery. Thank you for praying for him and for our family through this. Our God is an awesome God.

Our insurance deductible reset in January, so pray for us not to give in to worry as we get each new wave of medical bills for surgeries, scans, and specialists. Pray for God to meet each of these needs in a way that brings Him glory, and for us to grow in our confidence that He will always provide for us.

Abishai turns FOUR this month! We just love the little man he is becoming! We’re thanking the Lord for the sweet relationship Abi has with Benaiah and for all the growth we’ve seen in him.

We’re praying that Abi would learn more and more about who God is and that he would understand his need for the cross. Please pray with us that God would give us the wisdom to walk alongside him, equip him, train him, and make much of Jesus in our everyday interactions with him.

Here’s a side project we’re working on: After Abishai was born, we bought and renovated a 25 foot camper. We don’t own a house, so our hope was to provide some stability for our kids, give them a sense of home, prepare a familiar place to come back to, and build a little fun into all the travel our time on home assignment requires. It also doubled as a storage facility for our belongings while we were overseas.

We lost “Fort Raisin” in a car accident shortly after Benaiah’s diagnosis last year. And since then, Abi has been praying for a new camper.

This month, we found a cheap, beat-up 1960’s camper that could use a LOT of love. We hope we can whip it into shape to serve our needs and have a lot of fun making it beautiful. We’ll see how it goes! If you’d like to be part of the project, you can shop our wish list here.