God Our Provider: Family Newsletter 2025

Not gonna lie. This year started out rough. Lori lost THREE of her medical specialists within the first 30 days of 2025. Her pulmonologist just up and quit three days before her yearly follow up. Her electrophysiologist sent a letter informing her of his retirement a few days later. Then her OB/GYN of almost 24 years decided to try out a new field within the health community, leaving Lori with no opportunity to say goodbye. As we’ve learned, unexpected endings can be difficult, but we leaned into God’s wisdom and timing, and God answered our prayers for guidance in big ways.

On April 2, 2025, an SVT episode sent Lori to the hospital with a heart rate over 200BPM–the first of four hospital interventions within a three-month period. That’s when we met electrophysiologist Marc Iskandar at AdventHealth Apopka. Game changer! His care started resulting in real answers, which had been elusive to us and Lori’s doctors for six years. Dr. Iskandar’s knowledge, compassion, and understanding of Lori’s unique health challenges lead to Lori to have a heart ablation on July 9, 2025, less than a month after celebrating her 50th birthday. We knew God was leading in this next step. As it turned out, the heart study proved Lori’s hypersensitivity to stimuli, causing her heart to have to be shocked back into sinus rhythm. This limited Dr. Iskandar’s ability to complete the procedure, but he was able to scar enough of the heart tissue to stop the SVT episodes. Lori is still working through health challenges, searching for answers, but she’s seen improvements post ablation and thanks everyone for their prayers.

Highlights of our year:

* Our 2024 Family Christmas was celebrated January 1st when Meagan, Chandler, and Declan flew down from Tennessee to see their Florida family. Declan started learning how to crawl during this time with Grammy and Papa Lee around to watch. It melted our hearts. Awww! We were present for a first.

* Mid January, Carole Derry-Bretsch connected Lori with her friend Janet Perez-Eckles. This was no chance meeting. It is believed to be a genuine God connection. Lori and Lee fast became friends with Janet and her husband, Dale, while Lori was photographing Janet for the front cover of world-wide publication Women of Faith Magazine’s February edition. As Carole, Janet, and Lori continued to talk and share emails back and forth, the three quickly became self dubbed “The Supreme Sisters,” due to their eternal sisterhood/friendship.

The second half of January into February found Lori creating a second edition of her book ALL ABOUT HOPE (which can be found on this website) as it became her desire to make it easier for blind readers to listen to her story via audio devices. This was a true labor of love.

* March 10, Longwood, Florida, where Lori’s family lives, was hit by a rare and unexpected E2 tornado. Imagine our surprise when the voice on the other end of the line says, “Lisa’s house was just hit by a tornado, and Lisa was inside when it happened. She’s OK, but quite shaken up, as you can imagine.” We’ll leave the details for Lisa and Danny to share, since this is really their story, but from our side of things, we are SO GRATEFUL this tale doesn’t have a different ending. We praise God no lives were lost, even though one of the houses in Lisa and Danny’s neighborhood was basically leveled. Thank you Jesus for Your angels and protection!

* As winter progressed into spring, Lee busied himself at work with preparing for and overseeing audio/visual for Florida Conference’s camp meeting at Camp Kulaqua, which took place at the end of April. During this annual event, Lori offered to photograph the baptisms at Hornsby Spring on Saturday afternoon. Apparently, she didn’t manage to stay hydrated well enough and found herself at UF Shands ER in Gainesville Sunday morning. After a long day in the ER, the doctors decided they wanted to keep her overnight due to high, unexplained blood pressure, amongst other things. Long story short: the inconvenience of this hospital visit resulted in very important health information being obtained, details of which continued guiding important decisions as we moved throughout the year.

* In May, our nephew Mason graduated 8th grade from Forest Lake Education Center with honors. We are so very proud of him! He is now studying at FLA and made the school’s golf team his freshman year! The boy’s got skills. *big grins* And talkin’ about skills…we’re also proud of our nephew Maddox who is now a sixth grader, killin’ it on the soccer field. Let’s just say: their mom and dad have been having fun juggling schedules, getting the boys to all their fun activities. That’s what great parenting is all about!

* June 11 marked Lori’s milestone half-century gift of life. Friends through all the years (some going back 30+ years) stopped by the Bixby House to celebrate with Lori, making the day extra special! Having both daughters, Meagan and Adrienne, plus 11-month old grandson, Declan, in town put the icing on the cake. Later this same week, we also made a family trip to New Smyrna Beach where Declan experienced his first ocean waves. Fun memories!

* Sadly, we lost our sweet “Chloe Doodle” (Chihuahua/Maltese mix) of 16.5 years at the end of July, only a day before our grandson turned one year old. God gifted us 3.5 extra years with Chloe against the 3 months the vet said we would have in December 2021. Her health deteriorated rapidly her last week, so the unexpected ending made the goodbyes especially hard!

* We thought we would wait a few months before adopting another dog, but God brought 5.5-month-old, rust-colored Ollie (full chihuahua) into our lives on August 1, 2025, less than a week after Chloe died. When we met Ollie, we immediately knew he was meant for our family. Sweet and full of energy and love, Ollie has filled the void Chloe left, giving us the opportunity to continue sharing our hearts and home, just like Chloe would have wanted for us. He’s also been the perfect dose of therapy required to keep us all from falling into a deep sadness–Sophia (our kitty) included. It’s been interesting to watch God make a way through the dark days, bringing unexpected joy to our journey!

A couple days after adopting Ollie, Lori’s college bestie, Melissa (Robbins) Juhl, whom Lori hadn’t seen in person in 29 years, visited Florida with her oldest daughter, Amelia. Oh, what fun they had catching up! It was almost like they’d never been apart. There’s something truly grounding about reconnecting with old friends, having the past and the present come together.

Another blessing took place on August 9 as we (Lee and Lori) celebrated 15 years of marriage. Despite all the ups and downs, we continue to feel honored to be serving God, family, friends and community together!

* On a fun note: this October, Lee invited Lori to a daily drawing challenge with prompts given to Inktoberfest participants–one for each day of October, 31 in all. Lee and Lori both participated and had quite a bit of fun coming up with original works of art, which they shared with each other and online every evening. Surprisingly, neither missed a day or fell behind the entire month.

* November had some ups and downs:

Lori’s mom, VerDenne, somehow missed the bottom step walking down stairs in IKEA while shopping beginning of this month and ended up with a compression fracture in her spine. Several days were spent visiting Mom in the hospital and encouraging her while she went through inpatient rehab. She is now healing at home, very thankful for all your prayers. We are so proud of her courage and determination to get well! She is a strong woman, and we admire her for that.

Mid month, Lori and Lee chose to attend the Yophi Doll Show in Orlando for a third year in a row, seeing Lori’s favorite doll sculptor, Ping Lau, in person again, having Ping sign two of Lori’s dolls on their cloth bodies. Lori’s Reborn doll mentor, Jean Parchment, was also there and enjoyed all the doll festivities with her husband, Orville. That was a special God wink. Lori continues to enjoy Reborn art, painting and collecting. We’ve found it’s a very therapeutic hobby! Lori is also appreciative of having a spouse who supports her creative outlet.

Mid November, Lee enjoyed an in-person Orlando Magic game against Portland with a coworker and work rep. Not only were the gifted seats spectacular, the teams were equally matched. The neck and neck plays made the game intense, but most exciting was how Magic pulled out an incredible win as the last buzzer was sounding. Way to go team!

Lee and Lori spent Thanksgiving in Florida at the Bixby House this year enjoying family time with Dean, VerDenne, and Adrienne. The rest of the family was spread across the country making memories in Washington, Michigan, and Tennessee. Thanks to modern technology, we’ve been able to stay in close communication across the miles.

* During the beginning of December, after much hard work, our son-in-law, Chandler, passed his FISDAP test, making him a basic EMT graduate! Way to go, Chandler!!

December 14, our youngest daughter, Adrienne, celebrated a milestone birthday, turning 21. How is that even possible? Just yesterday we were playing Barbies on the floor, watching her glide through ballet class, and making birthday cakes together, celebrating childhood. Now she’s all grown up, baking cakes for others in the bakery at work and sharing her love for aesthetically designed food. We are so proud of the woman she is and the woman she’s becoming!

For those we haven’t seen this year, we miss you.

For those we have connected with on social media or via phone calls and texts, thank you for staying in touch and sharing your lives with us this year. Your authenticity has helped us grow and challenged us to be better friends/coworkers/family members/followers of Christ.

For those of you who have lost loved ones this year (sadly, there are way to many to mention each one), know that we feel your pain and empathize with your loss, continuing to hold you up in prayer. The sacred was never meant to be torn from our lives, but you are not alone! We send our biggest (((hugs))).

Each one of you matter.
Each one of your prayers has been felt and has sustained us on our journey.

For this, we say…
THANK YOU!!

Please know we care about you, as well, and we are praying you feel Jesus in a very real way.

For those of you who live in Florida, but who we never see in person, let’s change that in 2026. We would love to spend time catching up with you, sharing life, and connecting in person.

For those of you who live out of state, if you ever find yourselves in Florida, look us up. You are always welcome in our home!

Whatever you do this next year, don’t give up in the waiting. Jesus is coming soon!! Until our next hello, know that we love you as much as Jesus loves us, and He’s gotcha!

Blessings in 2026,
Lee & Lori Bennett (LBx2)