Finding Perspective

My favorite course in college happened during the second semester of my freshman year at Baylor with my good friend (and freshman roommate) Jeff Kok.  Jeff and I were looking to take a few classes together and needed to fill a 4-hour lab course...the class we settled on was astronomy.  Astronomy is in no way associated with the major I choose or the life I had planned out after college, but for whatever reason it always appealed to my personality.  Jeff and I would stay up late before tests to study and would always find childish analogies or mnemonic devices to remember the features of our solar system.  Some of which we still joke about as 30-year old dads who haven't been in a dorm room since 2004.  We definitely had some good times in that 12 x 13 dorm room...  As part of the course, students were required to complete three hours of course work and one hour of "lab" which consisted of actual laboratory work or watching a video.  One night, I attended a one hour video that was narrated by Stephen Hawking; the video started at the base level of existence, the cellular level of our bodies and expanded out farther and farther into the universe to show the grand scale of existence.  It took less than 60 minutes of being in the right place, at the right time for me to realize that the world that we live in was made by a Creator that spoke into existence a universe that is beyond comprehension.  That random video which I'm sure other student were ignoring or sleeping through was life changing for me.

But this is The Hazel Report -- so what does this have to do with Hazel?

When we got the genetics report on Hazel, we learned that her micro-deletion on Chromosome 6 was approximately 1.2 megabytes.  Do you understand how small that is?  Please allow me to put this to scale: if you're reading this blog on a standard 16 gigabyte iPhone, than 1.2 megabytes is 0.008% of the capacity of your phone.  It's nothing.  It's tiny.  But it means a lot to our daughter's life.  For the last 14 months, Aubree and I have been trying to get a handle on every situation and all the variables that exist for Hazel's health...because frankly, there is a lot to process and do.  There are times that we feel confident and happy but there are also times (like earlier this month for me) where the weight of all these surgeries is overwhelming.  But recently I've tried to take time to find some perspective.

I have found myself thinking back to a class I took 10 years ago with a friend who I met because God planned for us to be potluck roommates.  I'm not focused on that fact that there are bigger problems in the world than Hazel having a micro-deletion in her genetic make up.  I'm focused on that fact that the God who I place my faith in is the creator of this immense and complex universe -- so how can He not be able to conquer 1.2 megabytes of missing DNA?

GOD IS IN CONTROL.