Joy cometh in the Morning

Several posts ago, I wrote about our friends young daughter, Joy, who had been diagnosed with a rare form of kidney cancer at the very tender age of 6 months!! Over the last 2 1/2 months, baby Joy and her loving parents, Fred and Ethel, have endured chemo treatments every three weeks( I believe that time frame is correct) at the local children's hospital.
On the third Monday of the month, Joy and her Daddy make the hour and a half trek to the local children's hospital around mid morning. Since Joy's Daddy is one of many in our state right now without work, he is her primary care giver while her mommy works to maintain her full time job as well as here sanity. They begin in triage with some blood work, then they move the pair to a room where they begin her first injection of chemo mid afternoon. Joy's mommy makes the exhausting two hour drive from her work during rush hour traffic to the hospital that is their home for three days each month. Praise the Lord, Ethel's employer is kind during this crazy time in her family's lives and allows her to work from the hospital if necessary or not at all while her little girl is in the hospital each month.
This week was Joy's third or fourth round of chemo, which was moved around a bit due to the Christmas holiday. God has blessed Joy during this time with little sickness, she may not want to eat alot after her treatments and her hair is thinning, but she has not been unbearably sick. Quite the opposite, from what I am told. She gives smiles to the nursing staff and doctors often and laughs out loud when her Grandma imitates Elmo.
So, this week when the phone rang Saturday at Fred and Ethel's home, they were use to the phone number from the local children's hospital appearing. On this day, it was one of baby Joy's team of doctors to tell the little family that there is no sign of any further cancer in the baby's little body!! GONE!!!!! Praise the Lord!!!!
The inflection can only be described in Fred's voice as relieved as he called our home Saturday afternoon.And thankful to the Creator and Savior for healing their little girl.
Amazing Grace, is all that kept ringing in my ears as my husband retold the story to me, as I cried in awareness of God's greatness.
Yet another gift we have seen this Christmas season that can not be bought in stores. Yet, the best gift that they could have been given apart from their individual salvation's.
I am amazed as I sit back and allow God to teach me that Christmas is not about the material things, as society would have us to believe. It is about the gift that came that day, a baby, who was laid in a manger who grew to be a man, that died on a cross but still lives inside each and everyone of us if we will allow Him too.
God has been good this season, even with the loss of Rod's job and the uncertainty of our financial future. However, there is a passage in the bible that says it all: Weeping may endure for a night but Joy cometh in the morning!!!!