a sweet homecoming

The streets of Madison have been lined with pink bows & balloons for several days now.  Seventeen-year-old Laura Margaret came home Sunday night from Duke Medical Center where she's been for the past thirteen months.  She & her mom moved to Durham, North Carolina for her to have treatment, which ended up being lung & bone marrow transplants from the same donor...which is apparently a huge breakthrough medically.

Laura Margaret was born with combined immune deficiency disease...the same immune deficiency disease that her brother Michael died of when he was just three or four.  After the transplants, she was finally able to leave the hospital cured.

Though many of us only know of Laura Margaret & don't know her personally, it was a beautiful thing to see a whole community rally together time after time in prayer for this sweet girl.  Numerous prayer vigils were held at her home & her church while she was away.  A group even gathered at her house to sing "Happy Birthday" to her on Skype for her birthday this past year.

She really has an amazing story.  Amidst everything that was going on with Laura Margaret medically, she was able to keep up with her schoolwork (she'll be starting 11th grade next week with the rest of her class) & even wrote devotions that were sent out to everyone in her prayer group on Facebook.  And every message ended with:

Pink being her favorite color, e-mails were circulated & bows & ribbons & balloons adorned the whole town when she rode up in a pink car on Sunday.  People dressed in pink lined the streets & cheered.  Both stoplights had police cars to stop traffic as Laura Margaret arrived home.

Ok, so everything might not have been quite as pink as it appears in these pictures...but it was pretty close.

Read more of her story here...or here...or here...

Watch an interview here & 11 Alive's coverage of her homecoming here.