suffering

"We spend our years with sighing; it is a valley of tears;but death is the funeral of all our sorrows." —Thomas Watson

so this morning at church kristina was commended to the Lord and our prayers as she prepares to head out to the Great White North of minnesota. my heart ached as jeff prayed for her and shared the verse about how the times and places we live in are ordained by God that we might grope and find Him. my heart swelled into my throat, my eyes bubbled over with tears, like a rising surge i couldn't keep down anymore and i thought about suffering; the tearing at your guts, the pain of change, the exhaustion of one more trial....and this is Christ's school, Satan's playground. my sister-in-law jennifer suggested over thanksgiving that i write down all the stuff that has been going on in our lives and tangential to our lives, just to remember what God has brought us through.

so here it is, a little list of the changes and trials....may we all grope for God, we have nothing else...he's not always safe, but he's always good (chronicles of narnia)

beginning in september/october of last year:

* the 4-runner gets in a wreck and we have lots of wrangling with the insurance companies involved

* isaiah is born

* the 4-runner gets in another wreck, rear-ended by a girl with NO insurance, legal action then gets underway

* at isaiah's 2-week check the doctor suspects a problem with one of his testicles

* the pediatric urologist says surgery is required to remove a damaged testicle, secure the healthy one, and fix a possible hernia

* isaiah has a sonogram for a suspicious dimple in his back

* isaiah has an MRI to determine if he has a neurological condition known as tethered spinal cord, which would require one or many surgeries to correct, fortunately he didn't have the condition

* i start having debilitating gall bladder attacks and end up having surgery to remove it

* marshall and mason are in the car wreck, marshall is killed, mason is badly burned

* jenni has an emergency c-section...all of us in the States wait to see if the baby is okay...martha and i stood together in her kitchen praying and crying, but get a phone call from michele that the baby's born and it's okay

* baby adriaan goes to the NICU, will and jenni must wait 2 days before even touching him and still adriaan must stay at the hospital while jenni shuttles back and forth herself recovering from the c-section

* my own baby doctor, dr. grogono, is also pregnant, but her baby has a very serious heart defect which has put the baby's life in jeopardy and has required 2 surgeries in utero and will require several more as soon as the baby is born, assuming he is viable--his name is anderton, but will be called anders--and people with his particular defect often don't live past 15-20 years old unless they have a heart transplant

* my sister faced some very scary health issues, but everything has been well-treated

* she left 10 days ago for chicago and i miss her

* liz left for dallas

* now kristina leaves for minnesota

leaving and changing and birth and death--never has my heart cried out so much for God, but the apathy that i carry around at times is shocking in light of all the trials and desperation that surround me and those i love.

but like it or not i have been purchased, adopted, blood-bought by the God who is able to keep me

in all circumstances