today my family and I have invited a lot of friends and family over for a celebration. I hope its a grand time.
we are celebrating b/c this Christmas was the 5th anniversary of my lung transplant. its a glorious time of year for my family and I! its a chance to really celebrate the providence and provision of my Lord and Savior, Jesus the Christ, and how He saved me so vividly. its a chance to show off what amazing doctors and nurses I have and had, who now are simply friends and not care takers! its a chance to sit & reflect and enjoy the memories I have made over the last 1,827 days. its a time of sweet, sweet reflection for me, for my parents, my brothers, and all those who love and care so deeply for me, all of whom I am extremely thankful for. its a chance to consider what my life has meant to so many people, not b/c of me, but b/c of how the Lord chose to work in my life by saving me (physically and spiritually)! its a chance to try as hard as it is to remember what the Lord so mightily pulled me from 43,848 hours ago, from that nasty stench of death that was quickly creeping in over my life .
but on an often hard to balance sense of appreciation and dire hurting in my heart, its also a time of humility, as I must remember and never forget my donor family. i have not met them. one thing I pray the Lord blesses me with in this life is to meet them ... i want to meet them as badly as I want to find my future wife, as badly as I want to be a missionary ... you should get the point. my heart longs so to meet them, embrace them, and weep with them for the pain the experience each year, and for the hope that maybe, just maybe, my life might stir up in their hearts. they lost a child about five years ago, and donated his organs ... and now I am living! i dear never take that lightly, for i am so so unspeakably with my entire being grateful and thankful, and oh how I love this family i do now yet know!
and to those of you who think it odd or weird that I joke and seem to take this part of my life too lightly, trust me, I do not ever take it lightly but I do love to joke about. I joke about it all, b/c its all such a vivid picture of how the Lord Jesus is the Mighty One and the Great Physician, greater than CF ... which is a result of sin in the world. but I cannot take my lungs lightly ... my lungs are a precious life sustaining gift, and the day I forget is the day I will probably die ... maybe, or maybe the day i will deserve to.
it has been approximately 2,630,880 minutes since my transplant, and each of those 157,852,800 seconds has been more than my family and doctors ever thought I would have ... so whether good or bad, faith-filled or sin-hacked, i do not wish for anything different with my life ... I am so grateful, I truly cannot begin to describe how much gratitude there is in my heart, for my docs, my lungs, my donor family, my true family, my friends and extended family, and my life, for my undergrad college career and now my post-grad career, and everything that is such an amazing blessing in my life!
and finally, to my donor family, if by some amazing outpouring of God's grace you read this, please, i beg of you, please get in touch with me and my family ... for I have so much to say, or maybe just simple silent gratitude ... I am Adam Sleeper. I was transplanted Christmas Day 2003 at UAB in Birmingham AL, I am a double lung transplant patient! i love you and desperately desire to meet you and hug your neck!
all my praise and gratitude is to the Great I Am, my heavenly Father and Jesus Christ my Savior!
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