Buy the Body Beautiful iPhone app today thru Sunday & 100% of profits support Daisy’s treatment.  Check it out here. Thanks Allie Marie Smith for your support!

While looking online at the hotel near the clinic in Israel we might stay at our first week in Israel, Daisy was reading the list of amenities.
“A hair dryer?! Oh cool! I’m gonna dry my body off with that after a bath!” she exclaims with incredulous joy.

She’s been feeling spunkier the last few days as the chemo is getting out of her system. It’s so uplifting to me as when she feels sick, so do I but in a different way. It’s been a good week.
She is scheduled for a PET/CT on the 24th. When we get results our doc will determine our next steps. Our best guess for going to Israel is the first week of August. I’ll update results as soon as I get them.

Please pray the beast hasn’t spread. Dr. Slavin’s treatment has best results with the least amount of residual disease. Also, pray Daisy endures the yuck of the scan with grace. She abhors them. So do I.

As for this week, we are just praying, loving, enjoying, and giving all my thoughts and fears to the One whose hands hold our very lives.

Matthew 10:30
“not a single sparrow can fall to the ground without your Father knowing it. And the very hairs on your hair are all numbered. So do not be afraid; you are more valuable to God than a whole flock of sparrows.

Our friends in Ventura are having a rummage sale in a couple weeks to benefit Daisy. If you have anything you would like to donate, please drop it off anytime at 2574 Bayshore Ave. in Ventura. Thanks!

Wow! We are incredibly encouraged by your generous response! $60k in 6 days passing the $200,000 mark. God is good!

Do you see what I see?

We are really stoked the surfing world is rallying behind a Christian Surfers sponsored  ”Paddle-a-thon” to benefit Daisy. Check out the articles by Surfline and Transworld Business for more information.

If you live by an ocean, river, lake or fjord, get ready to paddle on Sep 1st!

We are extremely thankful to the more than 750 people who have joined us in giving financially to help Daisy get the treatment she needs to beat cancer. Thanks to Daisy’s team spread across the U.S. and the globe, we have reached $145,000 and 30% of our goal in only a matter of weeks.  This is fantastic!

Thanks as well to those who have so kindly organized various fundraisers. Check out prayfordaisy.com to see what’s happening and stay tuned for more to come.

We have about 1 month left until Daisy leaves for Israel and about $350,000 to go, so keep it up team! We can’t do it without you!

Our friends over at HopeMob (@hope) are raising $100,000 for Daisy’s Israel treatment. Before donors can give to Daisy, the story needs promotion to be “Featured”.  Please check the story out and help Daisy by promoting it!

Spotted on Facebook this week: “Daisy Merrick is so tough that when Chuck Norris wakes up with nightmares, she rocks him back to sleep.”

Daisy is home and happy to be working in the garden! What a long week…

Now we wait. We wait for Daisy’s body to recover, wait for the CT scan, and wait for her to be well enough to travel.

We tend to think of waiting as a fruitless endeavor, but that is not always the case. We plan on making the most of our waiting game; there is so much to be learned and accomplished. As the days go by we are deepening the roots of our love as a family. There is something to be said for a clear schedule and abundant time. Teachable moments arise daily, for all of us. We are so aware that the very rhythms of life have a beauty of their own. From picking zucchini out of the garden and serving it hours later to hanging clothes on the line together. Dancing in the living room, reading in a fort, telling corny jokes, doing chores… They all have a sweetness peppered with the reality of the fragrance of suffering. It’s funny how a little bit of salt makes the chocolate taste better; a little bitter makes the seemingly mundane a delicious treat. We are grateful for time, even in the form of waiting. We are grateful to suck the marrow out of life, whether we are in treatment or remission, whether busy or still. I encourage you, our sweet friends and prayer warriors, to stop today and watch a spider spin a web, to eat summer produce and let it drip off your chin, to look at your loved ones with new eyes, not looking to “fix” but to forgive. Not to “survive” but to savor.

I sound sappy today, but I never cease to feel this way after being released from the hospital. As I have said before, in the words of a wise woman I know of, today is all any of us have.

James 1:17
Whatever is good and perfect came down to us from God our Father, who created all the lights in the heavens. He never changes or casts a shifting shadow.