Abby's Journey Archive

Last night (Thursday) we celebrated the life of a dear friend and sister in Christ, Josette Kruge. Josette passed away from cancer just a few days ago. Hers was a battle of over six years. Our church was full for the service--standing room only. It was a great time of worship and praise as we celebrated, singing some of the same songs we sang for Abby's service.

The thing I will remember about Josette most was that she was always concerned about everyone else. She would call to ask about how Abby was doing, or we would run into her at church. From the moment your conversation began, she would be totally focused on you. It was like there was nobody else in the room, nothing else on her mind, nothing distracting her, absolutely no problems in her own life, you had her full attention.

Yet her cancer devastated her body--and if anyone had reason to complain about the horrible things cancer can do, not to mention the fact that sometimes the treatment is worse than the disease, she did. But she never did.

Instead she offered encouragement. She prayed. She brought gifts. She visited, as long as she could. She called when she could no longer.

Early in Abby's treatment, as soon as we found out that she was really going to lose her hair from the radiation and the chemotherapy, Josette brought hats for Abby. What a wonderful gift--only a cancer victim can truly appreciate the gift of a hat (or joy of giving a hat). I remember her saying "Look what I found--I got these on sale!" It wasn't until I was in the service last night, telling this story to those assembled, that I realized what that really meant to her. She was known for being thrifty--miserly, some might say, in a joyful way.

So Abby has another friend in Heaven now.

On a happier note, Amy got a call from Carlin's mom (see this entry) today. Carlin had a post-radiation therapy PET scan recently, and currently it shows no tumor activity. Praise God! Please keep praying, he will be continuing his chemotherapy treatments in an attempt to make sure the tumors never return.

Last, I put the Cancer Kids Segment from KPHO Channel 5 on Ourmedia. It is in Windows Media format.

The descriptive page for the video is here. The video can be found here. The file is pretty big, even over broadband it might take a minute to start. Let us know what you think.