Amos Ross Updates

Hello friends,

We hope that summer is in full swing for all of you! We’ve immensely enjoyed the past month as a family. In June we were able to go to the beach and the mountains for various work and play activities. Most notably, Amos was able to participate and keep up with all of our planned events — no small thing given all that he’s been through! We continue to see God’s mercy in allowing him to feel mostly himself and sustain minimal side effects from radiation.

Many of you ask how he’s doing and we so appreciate your care and ongoing prayers. Like much of the last ten years, the future and Amos’s “wellness” remain largely unknown to us. Will he have side effects from radiation? July and August should tell us more. Will those side effects be permanent? They shouldn’t be, but you never can know for sure. Will he develop other related health issues sooner or later? We just don’t know. But we do know that the Lord continues to watch over Amos and all of us. He keeps us, and it is in His keeping power that we find rest. We do not know what tomorrow holds, but we know who our eyes need to be fixed upon, regardless of our circumstances.

Please join us in prayer this week for Amos’s first follow-up MRI since completing radiation. This will take place at Duke on Thursday, and then we’ll meet with his oncology team Friday morning. Amos will also check in with his neuro-ophthalmologist, his neurosurgeon, and others while we are in town. Please pray for a scan that shows no recurrence of cancer and for good reviews all around. Pray for safe travels and safety while we are apart again later this week.

I’ll end with a small but significant memory from this past month. June 25th marked the tenth year anniversary of discovering Amos’s brain tumor. Not long ago, we had hoped that once we reached the ten-year milestone, Amos would be declared cancer-free and “cured.” While we grieve the recent recurrence and the painful setback that has been for us, I also want to share what June 25, 2025 looked like instead. We were at the PCA General Assembly in Tennessee, and part of that event includes family camp for the kids. So on the morning of June 25th, I dropped Amos off with his peers for a day of fun. Getting him signed in, meeting up with his leaders (who had been briefed on Amos’s history), seeing him get on the bus and head off; it was all almost more than my heart could bear. But then picking him up that afternoon and hearing him tell me about the fun he had rock climbing all afternoon brought me to tears.

Friends, we wanted June 25, 2025 to look like a celebration of Amos being “cured,” and we hope and pray that we get to have that party someday. But look what God has done: listening to Amos tell us about rock climbing reminded us that the Lord is not limited by our circumstances. He can take brain cancer and two months later give us back a boy who is stronger than ever, as brave as can be, and willing to live each day as it is given. I never would have imagined back in March that Amos would be rock climbing in June. Never. But God knew. So while we each live through our own disappointments and trials, I hope you’re comforted by this small example of God’s surprising faithfulness. It may not always look like the story we wanted, but that doesn’t mean it can’t also be good.

“Now to him who is able to do far more abundantly than all we ask or think, according to the power at work within us, to him be glory in the church and in Christ Jesus through all generations, forever and ever Amen.” Ephesians 3:20