Latest News March 13, 2008
| March 13, 2008 |
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I am about to go AWAY!!! This weekend is our church's women's retreat and I leave tomorrow at 3pm!! Woo-hoo! I'll be back Sunday. It's at the Inn at Semiahmoo in Blaine (near Bellingham.) This Inn is right on the water - and I can't wait to throw the curtains open, smell the sea air, kick my feat up, and actually relax. What a concept! Luckily I have a great husband who encourages me to go - and he gets his men's retreat in April so we'll be even. :) His folks are coming up for the weekend to help with the kids. I'm sure the boys will love their time with Nanny and Boppy. I've left an instruction "manuel" about a mile long! But I left the biggest instruction for Don: Do NOT call me unless our kids are on FIRE! I SO need a break from seizures. And it never fails that whenever I am due for a break, Cody goes off the deep end. He's had a great 4 days seizure wise but that can so often turn on a dime. I just can't take hearing about all his seizures this weekend. I witness them every day. I cry over them every day. Life is just so darn intense with so many of them. I just need this break to not think about seizures, hear seizures, watch seizures. It will allow me to come back - ready to tackle them all over again. Well, maybe not ready - I never am ready for a seizure. But at least I will have been able to have a couple of days without one. I pray there isn't a huge crisis - so often I drive home when I plan a getaway because Cody is doing poorly. I pray he and Casey will have a great time without me and enjoy having Daddy all to themselves. I am actually giving a short version of my testimony the weekend -- talking about how Cody's trial has impacted my life. Gee, do you have 10 years? I get 10 minutes. And I know I'll cry. One of the stories I'm sharing is that after he was diagnosed in the hospital, they told us that Cody would most certainly become retraded. "how does that happen? what does that look like?" I asked. "well," the dr. said, "he will just slowly start to slip away. First his smile will probably go, then his laugh, then he'll stop reaching out to you, then eye contact will probably go......" I didn't want to hear anymore. So the day we got home from the hospital, I called the best photographer in the area and said, "I need you to come over today" and when she came over I told her, "I want you to document every single expression my son has. Every smile. Every laugh. If he reaches out for me, please get that. If he looks at me, please get that." And she did. I have hundreds of photos I can't even look at - stored away - for (perhaps) the day I am ready to see them. Here is one - from when Cody was still "normal."
I will never forget taking this healthy, chubby, happy baby boy home from the hospital -- waiting for "it" to strike. The "slipping away." And it did. But we gained more of him back that we thought we'd get. That was the last day we saw him smile for almost a year. But his smile did come back - however it takes a big to coax it out. And his laugh is tough to come by but boy when you hear it, it is worth the wait! He is a different child than the one I knew in this photo - but I know he's in there - and that's enough. So that where'll I'll be! Here are some of the quotes and such that I considered for my talk. They are rich and worth putting away for the rainy day when life is getting you down. The first is my birthday poem to Cody when he turned 3. Then the quotes follow. Have a great weekend - I know I will! For Cody: 3 years ago, on this day at 5:30pm, I heard the words... "you have a healthy, perfect baby boy!" That's what they told me. They told me you were healthy - there was nothing to fear. That's what they told me. --------------------------------------------- What they didn't tell me.... was that 6 months later my world would topple they didn't tell me...they didn't know... that you weren't healthy They didn't tell me I'd never stop crying ---------------------------------------------- They also didn't tell me... I'd given birth to a hero They didn't tell me... God created a warrior in my womb That every day of your life you would put on your armor and fight a battle no human should have to fight and that you'd do it with bravery unlike this world has ever seen They didn't tell me. -------------------------------------------------- If I'd have known who I would meet on this day 3 years ago I would have shrunk from the duty. Not because I didn't want the pain. Not because I didn't want you. But because I'd have know how unworthy I was of you. And still am. They didn't tell me that you'd raise me - not the other way around. That all of life's lessons are hidden in your embrace. 3 years old. Yet you've lived more life, lived more pain, than most would know in a lifetime. They didn't tell me how much I could love. How small I could feel. How your illness has healed me. Of selfishness, pride, fear. You - perfect you. They didn't tell me.... I'd given birth to a minister who preaches a sermon with his smile who lives in hospital rooms and in Doctors offices... yet who still, after hours of having wires glued to your little head and monitors attached to your body... after being poked, prodded, tied down - unable to move an inch, for the umpteenth time... that you would manage the sweetest, purest, most innocent smile. A sermon in your smile. Oh, Happy Birthday, my darling one! 
"Is there no other way, O God, Cory TenBoom..."there is no valley that runs so deep...that God is not deeper still." "And so it often is. Faith, prayer and obedience are our requirements. We are not offered in exchange immunity and exemption from the world's woes. What we are offered has to do with another world altogether." Elizabeth Elliot"As a mother comforts her child, so will I comfort you" Isaiah 66:13.
In the book, "When I Lay My Isaac Down" Carol Kent says, "the key is to fully engage our hearts in understanding that God loves ME more than I love my Isaac." Carol Kent continues, "true heart sacrifice involves letting go of our control over our "Isaac" and resting in the outcome, even if in this lifetime we are not allowed to understand the reason behind the pain. The high value of surrendering our Isaac is what makes the sacrifice so demanding, because we don't know ahead of time if we'll get our Isaac back! He lets me decide if I will make laying my Isaac on the altar an act of worship, where I lift up my heart in total trust in Him and release my grip on the object of my sacrifice." "The grace He gives us will be in direct proportion to the amount of suffering we must bear. No one else can do this except the Creator who made us and knows how to renew our strength by His grace. None of us are wise enough to properly apportion grace and suffering. We cannot see the extent of our future trials, nor of the vast supplies of which God is storing up in us so that we can met them. And because we cannot see those future trials, nor the grace that will be needed for them, we are tempted to become discouraged and despondent in our present situations. We see our trials rolling in toward us like great, overpowering ocean waves. Our hearts fail us with fear at the prospect of drowning. We do not see that we stand within the point at which God, with a steady finger, has drawn the boundary line. Beyond that line the waves cannot pass." John Macarthur: You will have trouble, you will have difficulty, you will have temptation, you will have pain and disappointment, and God promises not to take away all that. See, that is the current temporary lie -- that God wants your life to be happy, and peaceful and comfortable and successful and satisfactory and prosperous, and it's the devil who wants all the bad stuff. You want to know the truth? It's the devil who would like to make your life prosperous and successful and happy and tranquil because then you wouldn't need God and you wouldn't have to thank Him for anything. The prosperity message is the devil's message. God's message is a message of suffering and grace. God wants us humble and He uses suffering to humble us. God wants us intimate with Him and He uses suffering to make us intimate with Him. God wants our testimony made manifest. He wants our character on display and He uses suffering to reveal it. And the greatest testimony a Christian's ever had in history is when they're persecuted. And the persecution of the saints, the blood of the martyrs becomes the seed of the church. God will crank up the grace in your life and He'll crank up enough grace for you to be able to endure." From a book on Trials: "Joseph. There aren't many Josephs. We would rather pet our bitterness than wear a crown. And that is precisely our choice... It's funny: the one who seeks no "whys" knows...eventually...the answer to the questions he needed not to ask. Joseph, that magnificent hero, became such because he pushed past the obsession with "why" and dealt instead with "how." How can I please God? How can I serve God? If ever a man had the hostile right to ask "why" wouldn't it have been Joseph? A favored son. A faithful son. Clean...malleable yet strong enough to report the wrongs of his brothers when asked to. Yet cruelly rejected for his God-originated dream and for his sterling character. We hear no railing speech of "Why, God?" Instead, a simple setting to the task at hand. The question of Joseph: "what is Your will here?" The human question is "Why, God? Give me all Your reasons and then, maybe then I will follow You." The legitemate question, the one that can be known is "what?" God's "what" is "Do the task at hand. Live the life you find." And Joseph did it. Only to suffer again, not from sin but because he wouldn't sin! We would have screeched, "what good is it? God is not fair and there is no justice!" Oh, but I AM. In the hell-hole where any reasonable person give up because his "why" saps all his innards, the caged Joseph asked again...."what?" "What is Your will? What is my task?" "Do the task at hand. Live the life in which you are trapped. Do it well in the faith that I have a Divine Aim." And Joseph did. Even there. The question is not "why" but "what" and through the devoted acceptance of what God wants, the "why" of His purpose emerges. In some off-the-record unveiling to his heart, Joseph came to see God's unimaginable but brilliant purpose. We know the end of the story. Joseph didn't. For him it had been a blank mystery, a puzzle he couldn't have solved. It was God's secret. Only He could reveal it. And He did. "God sent me ahead of you to preserve for you a remnant on earth and to save your lives by a great deliverance." Genesis 45:7. Trauma creates a dilemma with God. It throws His character into dispute, His power into doubt, His love into question. Suffering twists our view of God so He seems both small and inept. Suffering doesn't need explanation. For your suffering has a life of it's own, full of unborn ideas, pulsing with mystery, rich with potential to solve your future suffering, and - most amazing - your past as well. Your suffering holds the secrets to your appointed lot and is therefore the hiding place of your power. You must value your suffering enough to coax it's treasure into your using. In the end Joseph found out why. He'd been in school, the making of a ruler, whose power saved many lives. The "why" unmasks itself only to the faithful. For Joseph, I AM had been enough. God could have. God didn't. So God had a good reason. Most men never make it to the end....to see. Their furious "whys" have gnawed their mammoth potential down to a tiny bitter nub of ineffectiveness...long before the end." |
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