knitted by the King: cooper andrew lusk

knitted by the King: cooper andrew lusk

"for you created my inmost being; you knit me together in my mother's womb. i praise you because i am fearfully and wonderfully made; your works are wonderful, i know that full well. my frame was not hidden from you when i was made in the secret place. when i was woven together in the depths of the earth, your eyes saw my unformed body. all the days ordained for me were written in your book before one of them came to be." Psalms 139:13-16

monday, march 20, 2006 - rebecca

soooooo...we're pregnant! today i am 5 weeks along with many, many more to go. i just can't believe it! what a blessing. the Lord truly is AMAZING. how thankful i am for His faithfulness...for the fact that His ways are bigger than ours...that His timing is perfect!

friday, march 24, 2006 - rebecca

how amazing is it that the Lord is knitting together a child in my belly? what an amazing responsibility He has given us. i pray that He will grow and prepare us daily for this adventure before us. i can't wait. every bit of it makes me excited! how thankful i am!

friday, june 23, 2006 - rebecca

t and i felt the baby kick for the first time sunday night and then again last night! how amazing! this whole "knitting" thing is cool.

thursday, july 6, 2006 - rebecca

well wouldn't you know...it is a boy after all? the tech said that brain, spine, heart, legs, neck, bladder, stomach, face, etc. all looked very good. PRAISE THE LORD! he was wigglin' around everywhere! it was pretty cool to be able to see him kicking me while i was feeling it.

i am very thankful for all of this! a boy! i've got a lot to learn about what to do with a boy. it still hasn't completely sunk in yet. YEA! i'm so excited! i can't wait to truly meet this little child of ours. God is so good!

monday, august 21, 2006 - rebecca

last night at church i evidently had a look of "i'm in pain" when cody [our worship leader] walked in the door.

he laughed at my posture and facial expression and i said, "i hurt." he directly followed with, "it's a good hurt though."

for some reason that really made me stop and think. it's not just a good hurt; it's an amazing, wonderful, exciting, blessing of a hurt. i am thankful for these pregnancy pains because it means that we have a baby on the way.

a baby that the Lord has graciously blessed us with. a baby that He is knitting daily. a baby only He knows everything about. even if i have to endure some irritating back pain and what not, it's all worth it.

the Lord is teaching me and growing me through this and that makes me excited and honored. i'm just excited about the three months to come and i'm so ready for november to be here so we can meet our long-legged son.

the Lord is amazing and i am so incredibly thankful for how He works and for what He's doing in our lives and within our family.

saturday, november 4, 2006 - rebecca

well, cooper decided to make his grand entrance early on october 31, at 3:25 pm. he was 6 pounds 6 ounces and was 21 inches long.

he stayed in my room for most of the first night, but was having problems feeding. his glucose levels were very low, so they had to put him in the NICU the next morning. he is still there and will remain there until he is able to eat well.

we can't hold him right now and that makes things a lot harder.

he opened his eyes yesterday and it was the first time we were able to see them! absolutely beautiful!

please keep our family in your prayers. we love you and thank you for your support.

monday, march 12, 2007 - t

i guess some of you know already that thursday (march 1st) was a bad day in the lusk home. if you don't, let me give you the run down quickly.

thursday we went to the neurologist at the request of our pediatrician. the visit was horrible to say the least. she basically told us cooper was going to be mentally handicapped, and even went so far as to say it could shorten his life span.

there is still a great deal of processing going on around here after that visit yesterday.

today (friday) we had our four month check-up at the doctor, a physical therapy visit, and a cardiologist appointment (at the request of the neurologist). the pediatrician agreed with the neurologist's assessments.

the cardiologist told us there is no problem what-so-ever with his heart. thank the Lord!

not a lot has changed, but there is a very unusual (Jesus) peace in this house today. rebecca and i are confident that the Lord has made no mistakes with cooper.

we are also sure that, though they are educated, the doctors did not form cooper in rebecca's womb, and they don't know the number of hairs on his head as the Bible tells us God does.

all in all there have been many tears, and i suspect there will be more. but there has been one prayer rebecca and i have prayed from the day we found out she was pregnant to this day that God would be glorified in the life of this little man.

that prayer has not changed; the only thing that we have added is that God would be glorified in our response to all of this.

we are praying for a miracle, and i ask that you would join us in that. thank you all for your prayers.

abide, t.

monday, march 19, 2007 - rebecca

i wanted to fill everyone in on cooper.

his blood work came back normal.

cooper's EEG came back normal and showed no signs of seizure activity. praise the Lord!

his MRI revealed a couple of brain abnormalities. his corpus coliseum, which communicates between the left and right sides of the brain, is either not there, or is very small.

this is the part of the brain that is sometimes removed from people who have severe seizures. people who don't have it lead perfectly normal functioning lives. however, it can cause developmental delays.

there is also another part of the brain that the doctor referred to as a "curtain." normally there is one curtain. cooper has two, and there is fluid between them. this is the same situation as the corpus coliseum. the solution for this is physical therapy, which he has been in for 6 weeks now.

t and i consider this appointment to have been a good appointment. even though he has these "abnormalities" there is no doubt in our minds that he will be successful with his development. i know that he will walk and talk and run and play. i feel very confident and at peace with those truths.

cooper is going to have to work harder than most babies to get off the ground (literally), but i'm so pumped to see what these trials will do for him as a person...as a man. i love knowing that he will be able to look back one day and have a testimony about how he overcame adversity and accomplished what doctor's thought he wouldn't.

i'm encouraged every time i hear a story about a child doing just that. the faith, the strength, the will and determination of a child is amazing and like nothing else. what a pure and perfect image of God?

how exciting to know that he was created in His image...that he was perfectly put together and has a perfect purpose.

how exciting to know that he will touch so many lives with his life and his story and his strength?

this time has been a blessing to walk through, especially being able to walk through them with my amazing husband. it has made us stronger as individuals and as one. we have learned and better understand how to truly walk in faith.

what joy i get out of this. i rejoice in what the Lord has done. our son is perfect, and the Lord didn't forget anything when He formed him.

i'm honored and thankful and blessed to be his mother.

1 chronicles 22 was a chapter i've found a lot of peace in, especially verses 9, 11-13, and 18.

thrusday, april 12, 2007 - rebecca

the thorn i stood a mendicant of God before his royal throne and begged Him for one priceless gift that i could call my own. He placed it in my outstretched hand, but as i would depart i cried, "but, Lord, it is a thorn! and it has pierced my heart! "this is strange, a hurtful gift, that thou hast given me." He said, "my child i give good gifts and gave my best to thee." i took it home, and though at first the cruel thorn hurt sore as long years passed, i learned at last to love it more and more. i learned He never gives a thorn without this added grace. He takes the thorn to lay aside the veil that hides His face. -martha snell nicholson

i just listened to a sermon by john piper entitled, "to be a mother is a call to suffer." it focuses on the "great reality of God's sovereign goodness in the bitter providences of our lives."

two things really got to me: the poem quoted above and a statement made by steve saint (to read the entire story of saint, visit luskbaby.blogspot.com)...

that to the unbelieving world PAIN is FUNDAMENTAL and JOY is SUPERFICIAL. but to followers of Jesus, JOY is FUNDAMENTAL and PAIN is SUPERIFCIAL. it's just so comforting to hear that... so reassuring.

the period of time that we went through with cooper recently, when we felt like "our world was crashing down on us," seemed so hopeless to begin with.

but i just thank the Lord that He didn't let us stay there in that state of mind. .

the doctors were trying to tell us that cooper was going to have a pretty big thorn to deal with his entire, and potentially shortened, life.

thank God that he is okay. but i really feel like the Lord prepared us to be able to say, "thank God!" if things would have turned out the way the doctors said.

i was in a state of struggle for a while. i felt like i was running from the Lord, trying to avoid Him for fear of what He may tell me, for fear of the "not necessarily good truths" about myself i was afraid He would reveal.

i didn't want to give up control. control only i thought i had.

i had a vision of how i thought our lives would be, and i lived like i could make them be that way. i desired control over every situation in my life. i believe now that that is where my struggle with fear and worry comes from. it is all intertwined - insecurity, worry, fear, control.

i didn't want to let it all go. i thought that if i let the Lord take control, that i would be opened up to tragedy. the ironic thing is that i never was and never will be in control of what i may think i'm in control of. the Lord was just waiting on me to fall on my knees and let Him take the weight.

when we got the prognosis for cooper, i knew for sure that there was nothing i could do to protect him or make him better. there was a huge potential for my child to have a thorn. a thorn i would not be able to remove.

it was an initial feeling of helplessness. this child, that the Lord has so graciously blessed us with, might have something "wrong."

my worst fear was forming before my eyes and my "tragedy" was taking shape. i just PRAISE THE LORD for His sovereignty, for His grace, His goodness, and His enormous healing and comforting hands.

we asked the Lord to heal our son, and that's what we believe He did.

and every time i see Cooper smile; i know that he will be okay... that everything will be okay. his smiles are confirmation that the Lord is good and sweet and in control.

it is in all of this that i understand what steve saint mean when he said that "pain is superficial and joy is fundamental."

the Lord used the potential of this thorn to "pin back the veil" so i, so we, could see His sweet, beautiful face.