Update on Jenny (Ross) Bizaillion

The past five days have been bananas. It started Thursday when Jonathan, our worship minister, came told me that his sister has pneumonia. He was concerned because his sister and their husband didn't have medical insurance. I was concerned because I have worked with Jonathan for going on two years and I didn't even know he had a sister. So that started everything. The next morning, Jonathan was on his way to Dallas to be with his sister and family and we all found out just how serious it really was. She was dying. She had complications from infection coupled with pneumonia, and her body was shutting down one organ at a time. It all happened to quickly, and we felt so helpless being back here in Houston, not being able to do anything.

So we prayed. And it didn't take us long to realize that we often don't give prayer its place in life. We look at prayer as something we can do when we can't do anything else. We don't view it as the best thing we can ever do for anyone. So that has been good for me personally. I've been praying and wrestling through what we want to happen and still trying to allow God to fulfill his will. Things with Jenny were bleak. It didn't look like she was going to make it, but we prayed. And we prayed. And the next morning, we got up and looked at the update. It didn't look good. So we called, emailed, texted and facebooked everyone we could to get a group together to pray at Bammel from 1:00-2:00. We had a good number show up, and we prayed fervently. Tears were shed. God was questioned and challenged. Mark Brannen was able to bring us before God's throne from a unique perspective. Even Will talked to us about his take on his family's experience. We boldly reminded God about his promises and took him up on his offer to pray for the sick. I left very confident that God would heal her. But it didn't look like it was going to happen. Jenny has been up and down. News has literally changed from good to terrible in as little as 15 minutes. The family has been on a roller coaster.

But Rick McCall (our pulpit minister at Bammel) and I went up to the hospital yesterday. I was able to switch my days off to make the trip. Our plan was just to drive up after I dropped the girls off at school, stay at the hospital for half an hour or so to pray with the family and make the four hour drive home. I was planning on being back to pick the girls up at school and go to a high school basketball game last night. But after being there for a while, we took Jonathan out to eat. He was glad to be able to be out of the waiting room for a little bit. It was good to spend time with him and hear how everything was really going. I am very weird about tragedy. I want to be there for the family, but in this case, I thought they might need some time to be together as a family. And I didn't want to be a distraction or get in the way. I'm just sensitive about stuff like that. But yesterday was a good day to be there. Nothing but good news yesterday and they are hopeful that it will continue. It looks like Jenny is improving. It's slow, but they'll take it.

We'll continue to pray for the Ross family.