Carolyn's birthday is December 24. That was the day we received good news about her last needle biopsy. All the initial results from those came back negative for lymphoma or Hodgkin's! That is truly a startling turn of events that we are ascribing to God's gracious intervention through His people's prayers. While Caro's doctor may still ask her to have one of the nodes removed (a significant abdominal surgery), we are thanking the Lord at this point. Carolyn said she felt like a ton of bricks had been lifted off her shoulders.

Last Friday, she had surgery again to remove more tissue around her breast from where they removed the first tumor. They injected her with dye that traced the lymph nodes connected to that area. They removed those and tested them for breast cancer to see if the invasive portions of the tumor had spread.

Today is my birthday. We got a call this evening while celebrating my birthday with family and old friends at Mimi's Cafe in Little Rock. The results... again, negative. No sign of cancer in the removed nodes. Carolyn breathed a huge sigh of relief and says she can't stop sighing.

Obviously, we'll have some more consultations. She goes back next Monday morning to have the drain port removed. (We won't go into that; it's rather gross.) We are continuing to count on your and your church's intercession for us. We thank you deeply for your participation in this hard journey with us.

I remarked to Caro the other night how different this time around is from the first bout with cancer in 1992. The outpouring of prayer and a sense of connectedness thanks to the blog world, Facebook, email and other forums has been astonishing. Literally, we've been aware of prayer and encouragement from all over the globe. Thank you.

And for those few of you who keep coming back to Notes waiting patiently for posts of church planting, tech, missional living, etc., please stay with me. I'll get back to that in the near future.