We're On Our Knees

Just about everyone I know is on their knees tonight for a friend named Kristi Walker. She is a 30-year-old wife and mother of three boys. Her youngest is only a week old. He was taken by c-section at 35 weeks because his sweet mommy was so sick. (He is doing fine, except for one kidney that is not working.) To make a long story short, Kristi has been diagnosed with stage four cancer that has spread throughout her entire body. It is a cancer that is very resistant to treatment. It is so aggressive that she may have only had it for two months. I can't even bring myself to type out the prognosis. Please pray for her. Kristi's husband is Chuck and her sons are Cade (4), Mason (2), and Zane (1 week). Her younger sister Amy is my very dear friend and she is pregnant with her first - a son. Please also lift up Amy.

This family is deeply connected with our community of believers in Houston and in Irving. Chuck and Kristi were youth interns at Houston's First Baptist under John Durham back in the day. They are very well known and loved by everyone there. When John Durham was called to First Baptist Irving, he took Chuck and Kristi (who were married by that time) with him as the youth pastors. Curt got to preach at their youth camp one summer and that is when we got to know the Walkers. They are a really fun, super godly, very much in love couple. In the summer of 2004 they moved to North Carolina, where Kristi's family is from. That is when Curt and I were called to Irving. We would have loved to minister alongside them rather than in their place, but God had another plan.

Shortly after, Kristi's younger sister Amy married an HFBC boy named Daniel Savage and they ended up being the high school youth pastors at our church in Irving. So we got to minister alongside Daniel and Amy for most of our time there. Eventually Daniel and Amy moved back to North Carolina, which now I'm so very thankful for. It blesses me that God brought their whole family together for a season before all this happened. And they have each other to lean on now in every way.

I prayed so hard for this family all week as emails and text messages were being sent out to the multitudes. Each day the news got worse and worse. Tonight, after hearing the latest, I am at the "groans that words cannot express" stage. I'm sure we all are. I feel like I could go throw up. Please, please lift up Kristi and her whole family. I cannot even imagine what they are feeling tonight. Thank you, friends.

"Jesus Christ is the same yesterday, today, and forever." (Hebrews 13:8)

P.S. - I am going out of town for a couple of days and won't be able to get online.