prayer requests

Just a quick post to ask for a few prayers for some of my family members:

• First, my cousin, Jonathan (and his family).  Jonathan is a Marine and left for his 2nd tour of duty to Iraq last Saturday.  He will be gone during the birth of his baby boy, which is especially heartbreaking considering he missed his daughter Taylor's birth during his first tour. Please pray that he and his fellow Marines stay safe and come home soon.  I am posting a yellow ribbon on my sidebar that will stay up until he is home, safe and sound. God bless and protect you, Jon.

• We have a sweet baby girl on my mom's side of the family, Sophia.  She is only 2 years old and has had pneumonia.  The chest x-ray showed a spot on her lung and they had to do a biopsy.  Sophia is the granddaughter of my mom's cousin, Claudia, who passed from brain cancer last year. Please keep Sophia in your prayers that God will heal and reveal that the spot is nothing to worry about.

• Lastly, please pray for my grandmother (We call her Grammy or Gram) in Chicago.  She has many things going on...and is going to need to be hospitalized.  Some of my happiest memories are from my summers spent in Chicago with her.  She is amazing...has survived ovarian cancer...and has the biggest heart you could ever imagine.  Please pray that the doctors can help heal her and that she does not suffer much pain. This is very hard for me to type, being so far from her, but my dad is there and I know he will do whatever it takes to figure out how to help her get better.

I post these 3 prayer request because I have seen the power of prayer in blog form and truly thank you all for being along with me on this blog journey.  It's times like these that remind me how awesome it is to have my blog (& real life) friends. Lately, I've had some very challenging days.  Whenever I have days like that I think of the 3 people above and tell myself it's not that bad.  If definitely puts things in perspective.  So, that's all for now.  Again, thank you in advance for your prayers!