Dan's 1st Blog!

In the early hours of the night, Daniel has found strength to write:

"God is love. God is Just. He beckons me to answer him in the stillness that has become my life to him right now. I am not called to an amazing life, but a life lived full of amazing love being an amazing husband and father.

There is so much to share with you all, but it will have to take time if any of you are still interested because I need to say two things that are weighing heavily on my blank canvas of a mind right now. Jeremy Riddle wrote a song called “Sweetly Broken,” and it depicts a mind not bent on significance in the world but insignificance in God, allowing him to do whatever he wants to a transformed life caring only about being like Christ to those God has put in his or her life. So please, if I may, I want to talk about two people in my life who care more about my relationship with Christ than they do their relationship with me. They lifted me up and held my faith when it weighed heavily in the balance of life and death.

Jeffrey Block. As tears form in my eyes even now at how much he was loving me unceasingly and praying for me constantly during the hardest time in my life, I have a love deeper than a brother in him. Kelly and I have committed to he and his beautiful wife Leanna personally now for the rest of our lives and find a freedom in this bond. It is a powerful testimony and something we will share with everyone we meet about the significance of just how very real it truly is. Some have friends like these, some are seeking for them, but know that when you have them, they are gifts that speak audibly of commitment and love of Christ more than any material thing we could ever possess. Jeff, Leanna, you are my covenant family, and I make that covenant with you.

Next, sickly pale fingers clutch the keyboard with unfamiliarity, trying to navigate a keyboard as I try to wade through the haze of pain killers and a body so foreign to me. I didn’t know how close to death I really was, and how much the two previous transplants and removal of my large intestine had really destroyed my body. The doctors said that there was organ tissue, like my heart, small intestine, liver, pancreas, kidneys, and lungs, and then so much scar tissue like “cement encasing” and cutting off all of my organs to full functionality. I had been sick for a while and had been on full disability from work since the beginning of December. I was in the hospital awaiting death or a liver for two weeks at the end of December. My eyes and body were without love and I was slowly giving into the beautiful promise assured to me at the end of the race. My faith was in turmoil as I was tired of fourteen years of this stuff, and slept most of the day in the hospital because I was just tired of living. If God wanted me to live, then he would have to intervene literally miraculously (way more on that later) and do things that man would not have answers for; even one of the most gifted medical teams in the history of our country.

One week ago the impossible happened and Kelly and I saw God so clearly; even the medical professionals were eager to see what was going to happen when they sent me home yesterday. I have already gotten most of the dead skin off of me, taken a shower, but still feel the affects of such a horrendous 10+ hour surgery to my beaten and scared body. Though I am not in the right frame of mind to discuss how I feel, I know how I look to a wife that I love more than life itself. I am bloated, disgusting, sickly, overweight in the wrong areas and severely depleted in the others. My eyes are still jaunt, I still have a little yellow tint to my skin, it takes me five times longer to do anything half as quick as she can, putting on my underwear requires her intimacy, and all I can do throughout the day as she holds my child in her belly and wait on her to help me up, help me down from bed, go on long walks that are no more than fifteen minutes, have her clean my over 200 staples in my chevron scar that is my stomach, message my aching and swelling feet, and have her continue to stress about what she is going to do when the baby arrives since I can’t drive and will barely be able to be in the room for fear of my own set backs. We have been given strict orders of what I can or cannot do for fear of more looming death for me and yet all Kelly wants to do is spend more and more time with me.

I am not at a clarity point right now with God, but He pours out his countless mercies to me from above in the form of Kelly my wife. Tears consume me and I break down as I think about my melody of thanks to God for a life that he gave me. My whole life is for God, but He has used her to rescue me from the countless and endless surges of wave upon wave of exile this world is trying to banish me to through pain and trials. I am a part of a Kingdom of Heart and of Conscience, my God has Infinite Glory and there is nothing but a tarnished and tired life that I could ever give to this most Holy Jehovah. My call is simple and my expression is plain. I will love Kelly Parkins for the rest of my life and be the best husband she could ever have, and be the best father to my son who will know without a doubt the heart behind the Conscience that is Christ’s love. I will be the best husband and father I can be, this I vow You my King; whether you chose to give me a month longer, a year, or seventy more years. I seek the glory of a husband who shines you and has a secure wife, and a son who has a father who cares. And in the end, they will know, that I was your Servant.

Thank you for Jeff and Leanna Block. Thank you for Kelly. Thank you for little Noah Daniel still in my wife’s belly. Thank you for allowing me to see you yet again and having patience with me. You are the only worthy One."