Today is a day that we couldn’t imagine only a couple of weeks ago.  We have been prepared and warned by doctors that Angela may not get better.  But the miracle is that she has.  We have witnessed her go from a lifeless figure lying in a cot with tubes coming out of every spare patch of skin to the little girl you see in the photos above, wide-eyed and ready to face the world.

It all happened pretty quickly in the end.  It’s strange to say it since Ange was in hospital for two months.  But even after she was transferred out of intensive care we were still being told that it would be several more weeks before she would go home.  So we didn’t get our hopes up too much.  But each time the doctors and nurses came in to visit they seemed to be impressed at the progress she was making.

Leaving the hospital today was a long and tedious process as we expected.  After all, each of the doctors and nurses who treated various aspects of her health had to sign off and we needed to get together a truck load of paraphernalia to continue feeding her by tube and administer the medication she needs.

Lydia was so overjoyed to see her little sister.  We pulled up at our place about 3pm and she was playing in the park over the road from our home with her Nana and Papa.  She came running over and insisted on helping me carry the capsule up the stairs to our apartment.  It was so wonderful to be together in our home as a family of four.

On the morning before Jen went into hospital we prayed and I read Psalm 23.  I remember commenting that it was a bit bleak to be reading about “walking through the valley of the shadow of death” before our baby was born.  But little did I know how appropriate that passage would be.  We turned many times to the words “The Lord is my Shepherd, I shall not want”, and “thy rod and thy staff comfort me”.  We feel we have walked through the valley of the shadow of death and have come out the other side.