Slide Show of Jonathan

Here's a little slide show of Jonathan. It covers basically from his birth up until a month before his death. It's pretty long (6.5 min), but I hope you enjoy it, and I hope that you can see through these pics what a sweet little guy he was.


The first song is "Great Is Thy Faithfulness" by Fernando Ortega, and the second song is "My Life Is In Your Hands" by Kathy Troccoli.

Today, and James 4:8

It's here!! My next blog post! I did it.

Well, not tooooo much has happened today, besides the brakes on the work van went out for the second time in three days. The really amazing thing is that both times we were in the exact same place when it happened. Thank the Lord we didn't have to slam on our brakes either time!! :) Today was also Jason's fifth birthday. My dad's mom and dad (Omi and Opa) came over for the day, so we had a good visit with them. Jason got a fish tank, and tomorrow we're going to get him fish. I'm expecting it to be my fish tank in everything but name; you know, all the cleaning and stuff. But that's ok. I've been wanting a fish tank in our room for a while, and, looking at it on the bright side, I just got one without even having to pay for it! Man, what a deal!! I'm liking this better and better. :P

Lately I've really been thinking about James 4:8. "Draw near to God and He will draw near to you." I don't know about you guys, but I often find myself praying ,"Lord, please just draw near to me. Make my relationship with You just so real, and make it what it should be." But, then I just kinda sit back and wait for it to happen. And it doesn't. And I find myself back where I was.

But (and I know this is obvious but sometimes I forget), that's not how it works. The Lord wants that true, living, personal relationship with us, but it doesn't just happen by us wanting it to happen. We have to seek after it. We have to "draw near to God." He will draw near to us. It's His promise. If there's something lacking there, it's totally, 100% our fault.

Paul Washer tells the story of how he just wanted God to be real to him. He would sit up for hours late at night and just pray and pray that the Lord would make Himself real. That went on for months before the Lord answered his prayer, and it was just amazing when He did.

Now, is that what we are all supposed to do? Of course not. But my point is that we have to seek whole-heartedly after the Lord. Not half-heartedly. And not just sitting around waiting for the Lord to draw close to us. And of course, our prayer is still, "Lord, I want my relationship with You to be so real. I want to be close to You ." But, that's not all that we do. We also seek to draw nigh to the Lord. And He will answer that prayer.

Finally, An Update

Well, I haven't kept my blog as updated as I wanted to, but I do have a couple of excuses :P I won't bore you with them, as it would probably just cause a rolling of the eyes or some other related thing.

For the first few days after Jonathan passed away, we were sooo busy it was crazy. At first it's like, "How can you prepare now for a funeral?" But really I think it's a blessing in disguise, because it makes you get up and get moving. If it wouldn't have been for that we easily could have just sat on the couch all day for half a week and just talked about what happened and stuff like that. But even though it's kinda heart breaking to prepare a funeral, it helped us to just realize that life has to go on, even if we don't want it to. Now, almost a week and a half later, life is pretty much back to normal on the surface. The Lord's really been doing a healing in our hearts. There's always that thing though, like when I come home from work and I almost expect to see Jonathan scooting towards me in his little walker. Or like when we were watching a movie and somebody sucked their breath in like Jonathan did when he was excited, and I looked over expecting to see him. Even though it brings some pain, I really don't ever want that to leave. I want to remember him always just as clearly as I do right now. I guess only time will tell if that will be.

The funeral was on Wednesday. We just held it in the cemetery. My dad led the service and did a great job, not so much because of how smooth everything went (even though it went really well), but because he spoke straight from his heart. We sang "It Is Well With My Soul" with Mr. Heyworth leading the singing. Then Dad opened it up to anyone else who wanted to speak, and a few other people spoke and just shared some things that they remembered about Jonathan and spoke some encouraging words. Then all of our church friends started singing this praise song that I foget the name to, but it really touched all of our hearts. Then my grandpa closed with a prayer.

I stayed behind alone to watch the guys bury the coffin. It was kinda weird to hear them talk. They talked about burying people just like I would talk about putting steel on a roof or something. I guess that's their job and you kind of get used to it after a while.

Afterwards everyone went to our house for lunch. We had a good time of fellowship, and all of us younger people had a really good talk. I think all of our close friends were there, and alot of our relatives. To bad we weren't all gathered for a happier occasion!

We still don't know why Jonathan died. There was nothing visually wrong with any parts of his little body. They're running tests now to see if they can find out what happened.

It's just amazing to see all the people who have written us cards or gave us money or food and sent flowers. One of the most awesome things about this is to see God's people come together and support us, many of whom we don't even personally know! We really appreciate all the love and support that everyone's shown, and all the comments that have been left on here and on my brother's blog. It's such a comfort and encouragement to hear and see all of this.

I hope to write a post soon on what the Lord's been showing me lately. We know what usually happens when I say that though!!! Haha. Maybe I'll prove myself wrong!?

God bless all of you!!!!

Jonathan

Hi everyone. Very early this morning, my little brother Jonathan died. We don't know why. It's just unbelievable. This coming Wednesday was his first birthday. Yesterday morning he was just as happy as can be. He was just the most perfect baby I think I've ever seen. He almost never cried, was just about always happy, and was just like a normal baby up until yesterday evening. Then he got a high fever, so mom gave him tylenol. He threw up quite a bit, but since he was little he's always done that so we weren't that concerned. Katie went and laid down with him to put him to sleep, and he just went right off. So later my mom got in bed and and a little past midnight he threw up a little again. He was also going diarrhea. So dad went all the way to the closest 24 hour Meijer (which is like a 30 min. one way drive) to get some Pedialite. Mom stayed here and took care of him, and he seemed to be getting better. Mom got up to change him and noticed that he was breathing a little heavy, but just thought that that was because he had a fever (he had been like that before when he had a fever.) So mom went and laid him down and laid down next to him like she always does. His eyes got fixed a little, and mom waved her hand in front of his face and called his name; he looked down at her, and then did his little look up at the bottle thing he did when he wanted some. So mom gave him his bottle and stroked his back, and his breathing started to slow down and he fell asleep. So mom was thinking that he was getting better, and she dozed off. When dad got back 15 min. later, he saw Jonathan and mom laying there on the bed just like they always do. Dad was thinking, "Good. He must be doing better." So dad got ready to lay down in bed and noticed that his eyes were half open. That was kind of weird, but sometimes Jason sleeps like that too, so that didn't make him too concerned. Then he put some stuff away, and when he came back in, he was like, "He's laying there way too still." So then dad kind of checked him and found out that there was no heartbeat and that he wasn't breathing. Right away he woke mom up and called emergency. Mom tried to get him back, but he wasn't responding. Then dad started giving him CPR at the emergency guys directions (over the phone). Mom ran into our room in hysterics and said "Jonathan's dead! Jonathan's dead! You guys have to pray." I was already awake when she came in and I got this sick feeling right away. I prayed for probably about 5-10 min. When the ambulance got here, I immediately got dressed and followed the paramedics into mom and dad's room where Dad had Jonathan on the floor and was still working on him. The paramedic immediately took him out to the ambulance and they started working on him. They kept at it for about 15-20 min. and then mom and dad went to the hospital. They could not get any heartbeat going and and never got his breathing going, and when they got to the hospital he was officially pronounced dead. I hadn't cried up to then, but I did when dad called and told me that. It's like I held out hope until the last second, and then that was it.

I can't even really get it through my mind. He was so healthy! So much fun! We all loved him sooo much, especially after what we went through before with his kidneys. He was such a joy to us. And, even better than all that, the Lord had worked a miracle in him. He was a living testimony to the power of God.

A detective came and interviewed me, asking for my side of the story and everyone's ages. So I gave him all the info he asked for, and then he came in and took pictures of the living room and mom and dad's room. So if you guys can just pray that that would go ok, we'd really appreciate it. Those things can be scary sometimes, but we've got nothing to hide.

After the detective left I picked up mom and dad from the hospital. I got to hold Jonathan one last time. Besides his skin color, he was so cute that you could almost believe that he was alive, just asleep. He was still our little Jonathan. But when I kissed him, he was so cold and his skin had turned a reddy-purple. It's just unbelievable; I can't get my mind around it.

So somehow we have to set up funeral arrangements. We don't know what we're going to do with that. How do you go pick out things for him to be buried in, when just yesterday he was so normal, sweet, and lovable? Sometimes he was just so sweet I would just give him such a squeeze hug that he'd grunt :D Now it's hard to believe that he's gone.

I just want to tell you all how much we appreciate all of you who have called and prayed for us, and even brought dinners. Like I said in my previous post (though that was in happier times!!), you guys are such awesome brothers and sisters in Christ! We've had so many offers of help we don't know what to do :) I love you all.

My mom is pregnant right now, and in her second trimester. She's had some problems with this pregnancy, but she was basically back to normal before this. If you could please just pray that she will stay healthy through all this and that everything will turn out ok with this baby.

Sorry this is so long. Thanks for reading it though. I had a lot I wanted to say. I'll try to keep everyone updated! They're doing tests on him right now to try to see what happened. I'm planning on posting all the pictures that I took of Jonathan on Twitpic, at least one every day, starting with the most recent. Click here to go to my twitter. I might even make a little slideshow for my blog.

May God bless and keep all of you!