Did you watch my ‘So this is Kip’ video? It’s so much easier to explain my family dynamic by seeing us first hand. If you watched to the end you may have heard my sister talk about her daughter Laynie. Since we are all strangers, it’s important to introduce the importance of Laynie early on.
My true journey with God started about 3 years ago when my sister found out that she was pregnant for the first time. We were all thrilled and we had huge dreams for the baby. But about 22 weeks into the pregnancy Lacey, Brad, and mom are at the annual checkup and the sonogram alarms the nurse. And the next thing we know the doctor is telling Lacey that the baby has a huge tumor in its brain, small organs, irregular heart and some of the chamber may be open, and the baby will most likely be stillborn but if she is born she will be heavily retarded and the doctors advised Lace to terminate the pregnancy immediately. So we started praying. Lacey was working at Lifechurch at the time and the pastor and her coworkers came to pray, the family prayed, friends prayed.
Lacey knew she would never terminate the pregnancy so we marched on and 8 months of this rollercoaster ride started, the doctors announcing all the disabilities the baby would have and etc. but we pressed on finding a new peace in God that I’d never experienced before.
"Trust in the Lord with all your heart 
and lean not on your own understanding;
in all your ways acknowledge him, 
and he will make your paths straight" Proverbs 3:5
After Laynie was born she was in the NICU for about a week when the doctors sent her home on hospice they told us to ‘just take her home and love her’ because most likely her kidneys would fail and she’d become unconscious and then pass in her sleep within the week.
I’d always heard the saying ‘live in the moment’ ‘live everyday like it's your last’ but this is when I truly started appreciating every second of life, my life and Laynie’s, God showed me when I start focusing on the ‘today’ things and examining things that seemed like ‘big deals’ well they aren’t so big-of-deals anymore.
So 6 weeks pass and the hospice nurse advises Lacey to take Laynie to a pediatrician and the doctor was appalled that this is the same baby that was showing up on the sonogram because besides Layns microscopic size, she was a somewhat ‘normal’. So we took her home and continued to love her. Continued to find this new appreciation of every moment we’re given and continued to thank God for his precious miracle he’s given us.
"..anyone who intends to come with me has to let me lead.
You're not in the driver's seat; I am. Don't run from suffering; embrace it.
Follow me and I'll show you how"-Mark 8:34
A year goes by and we get to celebrate her 1st birthday, which is huge.
But around September Laynie gets really sick; lethargic, not eating, pale as a ghost, so Lacey decides it’s time to go to the ER. Almost immediately the Dr tells her that Layn is in serious need of some blood and her hemoglobin level was 1.3 which isn’t enough to even sustain life, it’s a miracle she’s alive. After hours of poking and prodding trying to find a microscopic vein on her tiny body, they are finally able to access one on her neck. 4 weeks go by and the same symptoms start happening again, and she needs blood again. Then another 4 weeks and it’s time again. But the next time it’s time for blood, the doctors announce that the vein in her neck has so much scar tissue it can’t be accessed anymore. So without the transfusion they send her home and we’re right back to the beginning to ‘taking her home and love her’ again.
At this point I’m discovering a new sense of peace through God. Every moment is a gift and there is no way she’d even have been born if God didn’t have his hand on the situation and already have the perfect plan mapped out. So we continue to pray and lean on each other and just praise God for giving us what we’ve had so far.
"May your unfailing love be with us, lord, even as we put our hope in you."-Psalm 33:22
A couple of days later the doctors call Lacey and say that if they can give Laynie enough platelets then they could do an operation to have a port put in which could access a vein right above her heart. So Lacey decides to go ahead with the surgery and Laynie had a port put in with no complications. After that whenever the time came for Laynie to get her transfusion all they had to do was numb the area and directly feed into the port, no poking and prodding, a painless procedure for Laynie.
So we celebrate her 2nd birthday and at this point Laynie is still getting transfusions and we’ve started hosting blood drives and I’m living with Lacey and Brad to save money because I’ve been accepted into the study abroad program that summer. Studying abroad is the first thing I’d’ planned since Laynie was born. Living everyday taught me that plans fall through and some things just aren’t going to work out, so I was in the mindset if it works it works, if not no big deal, God will have other plans for me.
So summer rolls around and I head out to Europe. I’m skyping home about every other day and my step niece from Texas is there staying with Lacey and Brad for the summer and they’re having fun swimming and enjoying life. But in the last couple weeks of my 2 month trip mom starts telling me that Layn isn’t doing too good and I should come home asap. She was planning on coming to London after the program was finished and her and I were going to travel around for a week, but the last week of my trip Lacey calls me and tells me Layn isn’t doing good; so now I’m starting to understand it’s not looking good.
The doctors said from the beginning that blood transfusions wouldn’t last forever and eventually her body would stop responding to transfusions. So that Wednesday Lacey decided that Laynie would be getting her last transfusion. And on Friday, I changed my ticket and had seriously the easiest international flight home. I was on an exit row and the seat next to me was empty! God had my back. And there was only 25 minutes between connecting flights and miraculously I made it through customs and checked in and I was heading home.
So I get home and saw Layn and sure enough she isn’t doing too hot. She can only eat ice cubes and even then she dry heaves. So I break down and have a ball fest because my family had been leaving details out and protecting my heart because they knew I wouldn’t be able to take it, and later I understood that God knew it too (hence the study abroad distraction) his perfect plan still working even though I didn’t know it. So around 6p I’m exhausted, still on London time and worn out, I pass out almost immediately. So about 3a I’m wide-awake and ready to start my day. Brad and Laynie are in the living room because the last couple of weeks he and Lace have trading off sleeping duty because Layn wouldn’t sleep in her bed anymore. So I tell brad to go to sleep and I’ll handle Laynie duty. And I get to spend 3 precious bonding hours with my niece before anyone else wakes up.
Around 6a my mom comes over (I forgot to tell you that my sister, mom, and grammie all live next door to each other!) anyway mom comes over and immediately starts panicking because she says Laynie is breathing funny. Well I didn’t know because I hadn’t been there and I didn’t know what 'normal' was. Another part of Gods plan. So she runs and gets Grammie, and Lacey woke up from the door opening and closing. And she takes Layn and tries to calm mom down and I distract mom and gram by playing them Kari Jobes single that I just heard and fell in love with, Revelation Song. About this time Brad wakes up and walks in and Lace wants the 3 of them to go sit in the back for a minute. So they leave us and I’m still distracting mom and gram by playing various songs I've found and about 5 minutes later Brad walks in and tells us that Layn is gone.
"…but we also rejoice in our sufferings, because we know that suffering produces perseverance;perseverance, character; and character, hope.
And hope does not disappoint us, because God has poured out his love into our
hearts by the Holy Spirit, whom he has given us." -Romans 5:3-5
A complete gift of God, wrapped up into a perfect story through a precious baby that thousands of people have fallen in love with without even meeting her. Mom had started a FB group and we've got laynie-fans everywhere. It was just another tool that God has used to get her story of hope out there and affect other people’s lives too.
So to finish the story, we had her ‘Celebration of Life’. Which everyday was a celebration so the death was considered a celebration of her new life in heaven now, so it wasn’t a ‘normal’ funeral service. We had an amazing acoustic worship set from our worship pastor and our campus pastor re-told Laynie’s amazing story and Lacey and Brad’s unfailing faith through it all. And after that 7 people accepted Jesus as their Lord and Savior; 7 of my family members, saved!; from a 2-year old baby that never spoke a word besides ‘mamamama’ why? Because God taught us that he is the way the truth and the life.
"God rewrote the text of my life when I opened the book of my heart to his eyes."-Psalm 18:24
So no, I’m not the person I used to be. God gave me Laynie to show me what matters. Before Layn I dreamed the American Dream; nice house, nice car, nice job, nice dog, nice husband. But in my new 3-year love affair with God, building our relationship, seeking Him, turning to Him, giving it to Him; I discovered ‘things’ aren’t important. I don’t need ‘things’ I need Him and He’ll provide for me.
"If your first concern is to look after yourself, you'll never find yourself.
But if you forget about yourself and look to me,
you'll find both yourself and me."-Matthew 10:39
I wasn’t supposed to have 1 day with my niece; the doctors said it wouldn’t happen. But because we had Hope in God he proved that He can make anything happen. And as a result I didn’t have 1 day I had 847.
So this was a pretty lengthy blog, hopefully yall got the gist of my heart.
Metro Magazine has written a couple of stories on Layn and they're professional writers so you may enjoy their stories more…http://www.metrofamilymagazine.com/lessons-from-laynie..so you can click on that if you want to read some more. And this is the newest article they just wrote this month. My sister works for Children's Miracle Network and we're trying to win $30,000 in Laynie's honor so this talks about that and also a little blurb about Layn http://www.metrofamilymagazine.com/help-a-local-family-win-for-the-childrens-hospital-foundation.
