My son DJ who is multi-handicapped has started to hold his head up and do chewing motions! We actually fed him stage 3 baby food today! Ever since the docs lowered his phenobarbitual medication for his seizures, he literally had less seizures and is more alert than ever!!! My brother-in-law Marcos who is also a pastor (my ex-pastor for a long long time) said something I liked…one small step for DJ…one giant step towards miraculous. For context know that when he was born and in a hospital in NYC in the NICU, I had to go back to FL to close up everything before moving back to NY to deal with him and the subsequent 2 year journey in and out of hospital. Well, while in FL a messianic jew came to my house (she was a Bekins moving agency rep) and told me “he will survive and proclaim God’s glory”. So hey you never know. I hope for the best, prepare for the worst. But God…NEVER lets you know what he is up to…good or bad. Anyway, I am rejoicing today as I slave over a 20 page paper due tomorrow!!!

Just had to say that in this political season we are in. Sorry! Now I found this great article on “CHURCH ATMOSPHERE 7 Ways to Rate Your Church” - Your congregation’s spiritual environment can be tested.

I’m not sure why this particular quote spoke to me in such a way…but it has…deeply. Life in this new millenium is intense. Technology which was supposed to make our lives easier, confronts us at every turn … haunting us to do more and do it faster. As parents, we feel the pressure to help prepare our children for the world they will eventually enter while simultaneously protecting them from the harsh influences that might harm them. At work, we give our all …and then drag ourselves home to face another fulltime job minding the house, the family and the finances. It is intense.

Just as the sun bears down upon us leaving our skin tender and burned and our bodies exhausted … so it goes with life. The relentless deadlines, expectations, to-do lists, and pressure to compete leaves our hearts tender, our emotions drained. Too many days are ended with us feeling ‘burned.’ Wouldn’t it be great if we could rub on a little “LPF” — Life Protection Factor each day just as we reach for our lotions with SPF? We can. It’s called perspective and it’s applied regularly with a deep, cleansing breath. When the pressures of life bear down a bit too intensely, give yourself a small dose of perspective. As you take a big breath, “Is my life going to radically change because of this issue?” If it really doesn’t matter if the report is completed before or after lunch, the answer is clearly “No.” The correct response is, ‘Don’t let this bug you.’ If your spouse is despondent over a change in his or her work situation, this is a different matter, one that clearly requires your time and attention and emotion.

Right now, I am debating about switching my son’s school from a private Christian school to a public elementary school nearby rated an “A” school but still people feel FL schools “sucketh”. I feel like crying. I really don’t want to do this but losing my job and now making a pittance of what I used to make forces me to cut down ALOT. My husband now cuts my hair, I don’t do the manicure/pedicure thing, I couldn’t even go to the Women of Faith $59 conference! To top things off, it looks like I have a roof leak that is worse than our inspector said it was and I may have to repair it with emergency $ I don’t have! Wow! I’ve never been this financial strapped. Are things going to change? I don’t know. Am I told to trust God? Yeap!

So, if like me, you aer sunburned by the glare of life? Try a little perspective applied regularly throughout the day. My LPF is G-O-D. I try. Sometimes I have to apply more than than at other times. I slather it on but not too deeply so I can still see traces of it on my skin. Why? Because sometimes I have a hard time trusting Him when I can’t trace Him. But one thing I know, it’s an “LPF” — Life Protection Factor that can really make a difference. Please pray for me and my family.

If you missed day one of the Democratic convention, you missed an awesome speech by both Clintons but particularly Bill’s. This is going to be an interesting election year!

Pain? No, thanks. I don’t want any. Had enough for my own taste thanks. Yeah, I have heard of the “no pain, no gain” school of thought but that doesn’t mean I have to like it or want it. And I don’t. Still, I’ll have to admit that there is some character building all mixed up in this suffering thing. What the fertilizer hits the fan and you are scratching your head wondering, what the hell did I do to you to end up here, God? I feel that way now. Yesterday’s message in church was good. My interim pastor at Christ the Rock church is really cool, he is the President of Sheridan House Ministries. he taught about “When God Asks You To Do Something New” from Luke 9:1-9. Basically he reminded me that he didn’t call us to “sit” but to “serve”. I cried. Why? Because after I lost my “full-time ministry job” I felt like well [with attitude] then that must mean I got you all wrong and you don’t want me to pastor or be in this faith-based world thingamajig. I have been struggling not only with my budget [i.e. $30k pay cut] but with my destiny, what the heck does God want me to do. I am getting older. I get tired faster and then he keeps adding things that challenge my faith. Man I am tired of this. I have to accept the fact [with kicking and screaming] that this is the way it is. Respite-enjoy it will you have it because the kick in the stomach cometh! In the end, it all builds character. Again, dag…I hate that but I love what becomes of me.

I typed this out and have it by my computer:

Long enough, God–
You’ve ignored me long enough.
I’ve looked at the back of your head
Long enough. Long enough
I’ve carried this ton of trouble,
lived with a stomach full of pain.
–Psalm 13:1-3 [The Message]

The beauty of the Bible but the Psalms especially are that they are so real. God, why are you so still? Don’t you care? How could you let this happen? You know what I am talking about right? A counselor at my job who lost his sight to diabetes told me the other day, “life is what happens to you when you are going about your plan.” That is so true. We may feel its long enough…the suffering, the pain, the injustices but only God gets to say enough is enough. How I long for that day.

Suffering and joy teach us, if we allow them, how to make the leap of empathy, which transports us into the soul and heart of another person. ln those transparent moments we know other people’s joys and sorrows, and we care about their concerns as if they were our own.

Fritz Williams

My friend Jen has such a way with words. She speaks in her latest blog entry about God being present in the dark, in the places of suffering. As I woke up today, my thought was about my friend Rudy and his son Sam. How were they doing? How has Rudy went through the ‘process’ of trying to adjust to seeing his son pricked and nicked, sleeping in a hospital room with all the machines beeping and alerting and most of the time annoying. As I read Rudy’s post keeping us aware of what is going on, I literally can see myself a few years ago. Rudy if you read this know that this will be a roller coaster ride of emotional rantings in your mental lobe. I mean, sometimes I was extremely super convinced that God will work a miracle, so much so that I told the doctors “I hear what YOU are saying but MY God has the ultimate power.” I felt like a fool the day I left the hospital to the next hospital for my son to get his first neurosurgery. Yes, like a dog with tail between legs. I will never know why God ‘allowed’ all this to take place in our lives. I also know that I still look at my son and envision what could have been. I still grieve. It is 4 1/2 years later. As a parent, I feel Rudy and Kafi’s pain because darkness and light seem to coexist. You grasp for strength from God, you seek scriptures that will uplift and bond your fledging faith and sometimes simulteanously you wonder why your child, why this condition and not that one. I mean a host of things go in and out of the minds of parents with children who are medically fragile. I went to the library today and reviewed a book called “What Parents of Children with Leukemia should Know”. I read the differences between ALL and AML. Let’s definitely stay in prayer for ALL as it is the most curable form of leukemia at this time. The book said that almost 75% of children diagnosed with leukemia have the ALL version.

Isn’t it interesting, that as I went about eating breakfast with my very large family today (sons, husband and three nieces), went to library, ate ice cream, in the back of my mind, or in the front of it, I was thinking of how life changes in a quick instant. How today all can be fine and by midnight your life could be changed forever. I said this before, when someone we know suffers a crisis, we want to help and sometimes we really are able to do “something”. But for the most part, Rudy and Kafi will walk this journey alone. Everything that everyone is doing is so IMPORTANT to uplift their spirit. I know when I think back on my journey with my son, this would have been an awesome treat to read about how people just “care”. Blogs can truly fill a virtual nurturing role, pastoral care of sorts through the internet. But still the same, while they feel the care, they walk in the valley alone. Even as they talk to each other, Kafi will have internal thoughts that seem totally not like her and so will Rudy. It is at these times as well when the resistance is low and the period of “what up God’ is intense…that the devil also seeks to have an opportunity to implant other thoughts. What makes suffering so difficult is the often senseless nature behind it, we just can’t understand why…but we have to be careful not to explain away the burdens. Paul tells us to “carry each other’s burdens” not to explain them away–which is why I loved Jen’s post. She was real about the darkness. the pain, the hoping and believing that God would be present. All of us at one time or another will be asked to cooperate with the spirit of God as he works in us to forge lives that are selfless, compassionate and full of love. The harsh reality of this is that we can’t be transformed in this way without suffering.

In my own life, I went through two MAJOR trials that almost killed me. I mean my son’s unexpected birth 3 months early, the problems post birth, the 27 surgeries mostly to the brain, the subculture of hospital living and then what that all lead to…my marriage crisis. I am sharing this because men handle things differently than woman. We all need to share our stories because there are glimmers of hope, restoration, realness that helps others believe that God truly can be present when all HELL breaks loose even when we were being “good” christians. I am a transformed woman but I went through hell to be the woman I am today. I love who I am today. Others who knew me “then” and now me know see the difference in me but it wasn’t obtained by reading a book, or hearing a lecture, or being anointed with oil. Transformation comes through the life tested by fire. Dag. I know, I hate it too.

I cry for Rudy and Kafi because at times they think they are going crazy not literally but with the thoughts that they thought a good christian should never have. Jen spoke of the pressure we christians sometimes put on other christians to keep the “ugly” life transforming process away from us and just tell us the happy ending. I think in life, in churches across America, there have been too many happy ending stories without the process sharing. Thus, we are baffled with things go wrong, awfully wrong. Rudy mentions in his other blog that he didn’t know how to pray because up until know God has been really good to him and his family. That was honest. But it is ok to feel like he expected it to continue. Don’t we all do that?

Bottomline, this journey that Rudy and Kafi have been forced to walk has just begun. Keep the emails and prayer going. Esp. pray for them to not give the devil a foothold in their marriage as they go through the periods of exhaustion, of second-guessing, of blame [even though it is not a genetic thing]…as humans we go through it all in our brains.

Just remember, Rudy, Kafi and all others, eventually after the crisis BECAUSE THAT DAY WILL COME, you will have learned that “in the depth of winter, you finally learned that there was within you an invincible summer.” And that, no enemy of our soul can EVER take away.

I just learned today that my friend, Rudy Carrasco in CA had his son diagnosed with leukemia (July 12 entry). I know Jen has started a blogosphere fundraiser for the family. I wanted to share with you ways you can make a difference if you can. As a mother who has gone through the ups and downs of having a child that needs lots of medical treatments, I could not stop crying in my office this morning! Blogosphere, prayers are needed yes. But more than anything, since the days are up and down, if you live near them and can cook for them, take coffee and bagels to the hospital [since you hardly eat when in the hospital with your child, esp. not anything really good], or send a card. Walking the journey of a parent with a medically fragile child whether there is a temporary cure or not is difficult. I know parents can only IMAGINE and while you may show love to them in various ways, trust me the walk is a lonely one. You feel like you are in a subculture while the world continues to revolve. Keep praying for them for sure but our walk as christians is to show tangible proof of our love and concern. Like DJ Chaung said in his post, show the Carrasco’s some love. Kafi, Rudy’s wife is pregnant, this very real situation will cause added stress on her and her unborn baby, pray for her as well. We don’t know why God allows these situations to happen to the faithful, I know when I went through my dark period with almost 2 years of in and out’s of hospitals, I thought I was God’s stepchild although I loved him with all my being. I am grieving with Rudy, Kafi and Sam but in this time also we gotta believe God knows what he is allowing…we gotta believe that–even if it doesn’t seem to make a heck of a lot of sense or even seems fair. We gotta believe but DON’T please send them “have faith”, “Good will come out of this”, “This is God’s will” emails. Those are the most annoying and hurtful at this time because as christians WE KNOW THAT…just practice the ministry of presence if you can and if like me you are in another state, join in on what Jen is doing if you can and practice the ministry of blogospheric presence.

I am not thinking about becoming election station but just wanted to provide a comparison of the candidates. Not one is ideal but one must be chosen…what makes you vote for a particular candidate? An inquirying mind wants to know…