Happy New Year

Happy New Year  from a family who doesn't ring in the new year in perfect (or even good) health. We didn’t welcome babies into the world who were “happy and healthy and that’s all that matters” and that’s ok.

When you wish us a year filled with health and happiness, I know what you mean, even as I glance at the pile of medications and supplements that it takes for Asher to survive.  As I look at the notes from the IEP meeting telling us how delayed Willow is. So we’re not heading into the new year “healthy” but that's how we enter every year and every year we are sustained. 

It’s a very weird thing when you realize that your family’s “normal” is everyone else’s “worst case scenario.” That what you deal with daily is what pregnant mothers pray against.  

I’m here to tell you that there is nothing 

that is not surviveable. 

I can say this because we’re alive. 

You can trust me on this because I know. 

No matter which worse case scenario you’re scared about happening in 2017, know that The Hutchinsons have probably faced it and we’re still here.  We survived.  We’re ok.  And we’re even happy.

I’m thankful for everything we’ve learned so far, for every time we realized that we are capable of far more than we imagined and could withstand pressure that is meant to kill and destroy. May all of these lessons be fuel for the rest of our journey. I don’t feel strong as I say these things, I feel incredibly weak but that’s exactly where God’s strength is perfected: in our weakness.  So be weak, friends. 

Thus says the Lord,

who makes a way in the sea,

a path in the mighty waters,

who brings forth chariot and horse,

army and warrior;

they lie down, they cannot rise,

they are extinguished, quenched like a wick:

“Remember not the former things,

nor consider the things of old.

Behold, I am doing a new thing;

now it springs forth, do you not perceive it?

I will make a way in the wilderness

and rivers in the desert."

Isaiah 43:16-19