9%

It's not the 5% that we were hoping and praying for, so there is disappointment. I don't want to say something like, "It's not 5%, but..." and act like we weren't asking the Lord for the number of leukemia cells to be less than 5%. We were, and it wasn't, and we're disappointed.

Now that is out of the way, here are the reasons to be thankful and rejoice. The 9% is a huge stride; it's down from his original bone marrow test which revealed 80% of his blood cells were affected by leukemia. The doctor said that although we didn't hit that mark, the treatment is still going just as it should, right along schedule. For Joshua to hit the 5% mark after one week would put him in a small minority. She thinks that one more big treatment like Joshua had on Friday will do the trick to send the leukemia into remission. We should also make sure and say that regardless of when he hits that percentage and remission, the treatment is not shortened at all. It's still 3 years of decreasing amounts of chemotherapy, so the journey really is just beginning.

A good friend from Birmingham wrote this as a comment in the blog a few days ago: "I've learned that trust in God during hard times is choosing not to say "I'm hurting, but I trust God". It's saying instead "I'm hurting, AND I trust God"."

I think that Becca is right. Trust and pain seem not to be mutually exclusive. Neither do faith and doubt. Neither does healing and process. So we would trouble you to continue to pray along with us, week by week - this week praying that the chemo would continue to do its job and that soon Joshua would hit the magic number. We believe that God's wisdom is bigger than a percentage and that His love and grace is big enough for us to feel pain and disappointment in the middle of it. I know you do, too. Thanks for continuing to walk with us.