Safe in the Arms of Jesus

Taylor Dardar, Sonny and Cassie's 18-day old son, passed away this evening at about 5:30. He is no longer in any pain, and his broken little body is perfectly healed in heaven. Right now he is in the arms of Jesus. I cannot express how brokenhearted we feel for his family. In the e-mail he sent tonight, Sonny quoted Jeremiah 29:11-- "for I know the plans that I have for you saith the Lord." God has a perfect plan in all of this, even if we might not know what it is right now. Please just keep them in your prayers.


Psalm 34:18 ~The Lord is near to the brokenhearted and saves the crushed in spirit.

Psalm 73:23-26 ~Nevertheless, I am continually with You; You hold my right hand. You guide me with Your counsel, and afterward You will receive me to glory. Whom have I in heaven but You? And there is nothing on earth that I desire besides You. My flesh and my heart may fail, but God is the strength of my heart and my portion forever.

Psalm 63:7-8 ~For You have been my help, and in the shadow of Your wings I will sing for joy. My soul clings to You; Your right hand upholds me.

Psalm 3:-5 ~But You, O Lord, are a shield about me, my glory, and the lifter of my head.
I cried aloud to the Lord, and He answered me from His holy hill. Selah. I lay down and slept; I woke again, for the Lord sustained me.

Prayer for Baby Taylor

Note: See update at bottom of post

I wanted to post really quickly and ask that everyone be praying for Sonny and Cassie Dardar and their little baby Taylor. Cassie delivered twins about a week and a half ago: two boys, named Sean and Taylor. Sean is perfectly healthy, but Taylor's heart stopped beating at birth for about 30 minutes. A few days ago, the doctors took him off of life support, expecting that he wouldn't live long. However, he continued breathing on his own and (as far as I know) is still off of the life support. But his brain was severely damaged when his heart stopped beating for so long, and the doctors are telling Sonny and Cassie that he will never walk, talk, see, hear, or respond. They say that if his heart stops again, they will not try to resuscitate him.

I can't even begin to imagine how hard this is on the Dardar family. It breaks my heart to think of it. We have all cried for their family so, so much. Please be praying for them!

Sonny is one of the members of the Christian band Broken Vessels. We know the Dardars because our good friend Jace Verdin (whom several of y'all have met) is the bass player for the group.

UPDATE: "He has been breathing on his own since Tuesday 2/13/07. His brain is still swollen. His liver and kidney are still not functioning properly. They attempted to feed him again yesterday but his stomach did not tolerate it. The doctors have said that Taylor's prognosis is "poor". However, they have stated that his labs have been surprisingly stable the past few days. It is a day to day evaluation. We have been blessed to be able to love Taylor, sing to him, read to him, and pray with him. As long as the Lord gives him breath we're going to go to the NICU and love him! We're praying for God's healing in Taylor's body. The doctor has said that if/when he is able to tolerate food that we will have more options available." This is from an e-mail sent on February 22 by Sonny Dardar.

Spring Dreams

Every year, I just love it when the azaleas bloom. For me, it always marks the start of spring. Walking around campus the past week, I have seen azalea bushes everywhere that are just bursting with buds. Our azalea bushes, however, don't seem to think that it is spring quite as soon as all the other bushes. I don't know why, except that maybe it is because they get so much shade where we have planted them. But today when I walked around corner of the house, I saw a bunch of beautiful pink buds. The bushes aren't in full bloom yet, but I know that spring will be here soon! I picked as many as I could and arranged them in a bowl. I can't wait for the hawthorn bushes to bloom. The white blooms look beautiful when arranged with the azaleas.

I also checked on my Spanish irises while I was in the garden, and I think I felt the beginnings of some buds deep in the stems. I hope that they bloom this year! I haven't had much success with them the past few years, but they seem much healthier this year then they have before. So hopefully in about a month, we'll be enjoying irises as well! I just love irises. They are so brilliant, yet so delicate. Even though they live for such a short time, they are still some of my favorite flowers.

This time of year always makes me so happy. I feel like I just have to escape outside to breath in spring. It always make me want to get my hands in the garden and plant things. I wish that I had time for that. Sometimes I feel like the beauty outside is almost calling to me!

New Guinea

My friend Carly left early yesterday morning to go to Paupa New Guinea for 3 1/2 weeks. She is going on a mission trip with David Sitton. I miss her already!

Lord, give them a safe trip and bless their efforts to reach out to the New Guinea natives. Help Carly to not miss all of us too much, but to focus on the work that she is doing and find joy in serving You. Most of all, may they bring glory to Your name in everything that they do, and may the New Guinea people see what a mighty God You are. Help them to have safety on this trip, and may those going on the trip draw even closer to You through this.

Carly in New Guinea last February

CAMP!! :)

Tomorrow Emily and I will be leaving straight from school to go to the Bentley camp. I can't wait! We won't get back until Sunday night. I heard that there will be a bunch of new people coming down from Kirksville. I hope that there are some of them that are around our age. It would be really neat to have a bunch of young people about our age there again. We haven't had a big group of us for a while now. It is so wonderful to be able to have a chance to fellowship with everyone. And the sermons are always wonderful! I just can't wait. Tomorrow I only have to take a test and sit through A&P II, then we can leave!! yay! ;-)

I love piano! :)

Oh, I just love to play the piano! It always makes me feel so much better. I was getting really stressed out about school and so I took a few minutes to go play (after eating some strawberry shortcake...;)), and I feel so happy right now! It's fun to just bang around with a fun song and then to play something so beautiful it can make you almost cry while playing it. I just got finished playing a bunch of different pieces, but I think that my favorite that I just played was "Doctor Gradus ad Parnassum" by Debussy. It's from his Children's Corner Suite. It's a really weird name, but an absolute delight to play!! :) It is a very happy song.

Playing the piano is my way of letting everything out. I love to play whenever I need to express my emotions. A lot of times I'm just itching to play! Mostly I love to play beautiful, expressive pieces, but I also like fun pieces like "Golliwog's Cakewalk" or "Pampillion (Butterfly)". One composer that I like that isn't very popular anymore is Edvard Grieg. My piano teacher used to have a huge book that was a collection of his pieces, and I borrowed it from her as often as I could. Most of his pieces are extremely challenging (a lot of them are on the level of Liszt with lots of runs and stretches and 32nd or even 64th notes), but I found quite a few that I could play. He wrote "In the Hall of the Mountain King", which always reminded me of the part in The Hobbit where Bilbo and the dwarfs are captured by the goblins and taken deep into the mountain. It seems as if you can almost hear the goblins marching around in that piece! I haven't played it in years, but it was one of my favorite pieces to play when I was about 13 or 14. I really should see if I can find some good Grieg music again. I haven't played any of his pieces since my piano teacher moved 2 or 3 years ago.

Well I'd better get to bed. I am in a mood where I really could talk about music all night, but I have class tomorrow and I need to get some sleep. I'm sorry to anyone who read this and was completely bored by it!! hehe! I guess when you have over 10 years worth of pieces stored up in your brain you have to let it out sometime... ;)

*sigh*....school again....

Sometimes I think that its going to be a lonnng four years until I become a nurse.... I hate having to stay behind and study when everyone else is having fun. I am hoping that I can finish this assignment (that I don't understand at all because my teacher never explained it--just assigned and said "Oh, it's due next Wednesday") this morning so I can go watch a movie with Carly this afternoon. She's going to be leaving for a whole month to go to Papua New Guinea in just a week, and I haven't had a chance to hang out with her in forever. But I have so much stuff to do.... *sigh*

Conferences and schedules

Emily went to the CEC conference with the BCM today. I felt kind of weird not going, since we usually do everything together. I hope she has fun though. I had to stay home and study. :( I also think that my immune system is still a little bit weak from being so sick with pnuemonia, and I was afraid that if I went and stayed up late every night I would come home coughing and wheezing again. I can't get sick again. I have way too much stuff to do. So, I made the decision that I needed to stay home and rest and study. I felt really weird being the only person in the BCM that wasn't going to the conference. Pretty much every conversation I had went something like this: [Me] "I hope that you have fun on the trip!" [Other person] "But you are coming, right?" [Me] "No, I just can't make it this time." [O.P.] "You're not!? You're just joking, right?" [Me] "No, I'm really serious. I can't come!" [O.P] "WHY?"
And so I felt pretty small by the time I finally ended up leaving the BCM.... Oh, well. I would imagine that they probably got over their tears by now and are rocking out to the concert that is supposed to start any minute. lol! ;-)

I have two tests next week and three or four the next, so I have a lot coming up. I am a little bit nervous about my tests in two weeks, because I have my first exams in both A&P II and Micro. I'm sure they will be hard. I think that if I study some this weekend and a little bit all next week that I'll be okay. The only thing that really worries me is that I won't have any chance to study next weekend because we will be going to the Bentley camp, and both of my hard tests are within two days of our getting back. But I'll just pray that God will help me remember all of the material. I probably should stay home from camp, but I just can't. Camp is like my spiritual oasis, and I need that. I feel like I'm so hungry to hear God's Word preached right now, and I think that for my spiritual growth I really need to go.

Well, I'd better get to bed. I've got to get up early and get studying tomorrow!!

Pictures

I have to post a picture before I can add it to my profile, so while I was at it I thought that I would add a few of the pictures we took last year for graduation. Hope you like them!

random thoughts

That last post was kinda just to test the whole thing out... This is pretty cool, actually. :)

I have been so busy with school lately. This semester I am taking A&P II (both the lab and the lecture), Microbiology, Sociology, Psychology, and Dietetics. So I'm pretty busy. I really like my A&P teacher this semester. She's much better than Dr. Nelson, who taught A&P I last semester. She actually seems enthusiastic about her lectures, not bored like Dr. Nelson was. It makes it a lot more interesting when the professor actually seems interested.

I think that God is giving me a chance to witness to a girl from school. I don't have any classes with her this semester, but she and I have the same teacher for psychology. I met her last semester in one of my classes. She is married and has two kids, but I think that she's probably only about 2 years older than me. Last week we exchanged phone numbers so that we could call each other about our classes. She has called me a lot since then, and she loves to talk about her problems. I really don't know what to tell her. She seems very disfunctional. She is bipolar, and one of her main issues seems to be anger. She is always describing for me how she is going to get revenge on people. It's really sad. But I really don't know what I should say. I'm just praying that God gives me an opportunity to witness to her. She doesn't seem to know anything about His love.

I am applying for a job at the hospital tomorrow. I really have no idea what kind of job I will get or if they will even hire me, but I really need the money. I can only work for about 12 hours a week, though. I am going to try to get in touch with the head RN tomorrow. I just want to be able to talk to her and explain everything to her and see if she would be able to put me somewhere. I'm really not certified to do any medical care until I start my nursing clinical classes next semester, but I think that it would be really great to get the hospital experience. I was talking to one of my nursing school friends today who is already in clinicals, and she said that if possible, I really need to try to learn how to do some basic care things (changing sheets, bathing, etc.) before I start clincals. So I really don't know what I'll be doing if I get hired. I was originally thinking office work, but if I could get some healthcare experience, that would be great too.

Hellooo...

I don't know if I'll be able to keep this up, but it looks like it might be fun. So, I'll try to post occasionally!