Sommers Family

Dear Church,

We can’t thank you enough for the way you prayed for our family last weekend.

Unfortunately, the results of Sabrina’s MRI indicated signs pointing to early onset Alzheimers.  I believe the chances of that in a 47 year old are around 0.5%. Not what we hoped for. We are not surprised, but we are devastated.

We have spent this week communicating with family, medical professionals, and Sabrina’s work. There is still a lot of work to be done in order to better understand what is happening–more appointments, more tests, more conversations, beginning treatment. We do not currently have a sense of how aggressively the disease is spreading. There will be hard questions about Sabrina’s job, our finances, and our healthcare.

Our top priorities these days are: 1) time with each other and with family, 2) Sabrina’s healthcare, 3) the logistical changes we need to make at home.

Church leadership and staff have been incredibly supportive of us and are fully up to speed. We will be away for the next two Sundays. We’ll return to worship with you on March 29 (Passion/Palm Sunday) and Joel plans to preach on Easter –April 5.

As you can imagine, we are experiencing frequent, overwhelming episodes of grief. But we are also experiencing profound gratitude for God’s goodness to us. We love our life together, we love our family, and we love this church.

We know many of you will want to support us at this time, and we love you for that. We will be trying to understand our own needs in this season of turmoil, and we will make them known to you as we become aware of them. We have already been so blessed by the love and care of each person we have been able to share with thus far.

Here are some things we would appreciate prayer for:

• That the Holy Spirit would help us process our grief without being consumed by it. This is a change in expectation, and as we said, we are devastated, but we also expect that we have years ahead of us and so we ask for strength to love each other, to love our church, to love our neighbor.

• That God would bless and move the medical systems on our behalf–that appointments with specialists will be scheduled quickly and go well, that medications would be available and effective, that insurance would quickly approve our claims.

• That the Holy Spirit would INTERRUPT the progress of this disease! Sabrina’s desire is meet her grandchildren. Joel’s desire is to get old with her. Pray oh pray along with our hearts that God would grant us these desires.

• In the midst of all this grief, we find ourselves surrounded by love. It has been an exhausting week, but our family and loved ones have truly shown up for us.

Sabrina has been scheduled to run a half marathon this Sunday, which she will follow through with, and the Leadership Team gave Joel the Sunday off to go cheer her on. When our families heard what was happening, they paid for us to spend a week in Hawaii–our longest trip together since our honeymoon 22 years ago. Your love, prayers and support have already been life changing gifts for us. We are so glad to have you in our corner as we face this painful season.

For the Healing of All God’s Children, and with love,

Pastor Joel and Sabrina

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