DJ was released from the hospital on May 29th! He looks like nothing ever happened to him. Although he does have a G-tube now to allow him to get "free water" and other nutrients more often without having to swallow all the time, in every other possible way he actually looks better now then when he went in. I keep reflecting on the fact that I could have been in mourning right now for my little special angel. I am so thankful to God that he spared us that pain this time around.

With DJ’s new demands, of course, its normal to think that we may not be able to do all that we are doing. I’m in a place where I am wondering if the prophetic words over our lives concerning the church we planted, our futures, etc. are real because if they were then wow, God sure trusts me and Hiram alot to give us added demands in the care of our special boy.

Who knows what the future holds right now I’m just so happy to hear the sounds of my DJ. I can’t even explain it.

Thanks to all who prayed!

On DJ: My special son, my little warrior is doing very well. Today he smiled a few times after hearing our voices. It indicated that he is getting back to his baseline aka his normal self as we know it. Praise God. Today was my 17th wedding anniversary and we spent it by his side in the hospital eating Boston Market. I am grateful to God that he spared us the loss of my son. I was not ready to let him go yet, may never be but definitely didn’t want to lose him on Mother’s Day! I am just very very full of joy at this moment. My son is still with me. Thank you God.

Blogging Again: Pastor Marc said he is committed to blogging for real now…check him out again here.

Dark Nights of the Soul: As I’ve mentioned when in the hospital, my dark nights of the soul, I read. The book I’ve been reading “Second Guessing God:Hanging On When You Can’t See His Plan” written by Brian Jones. Here’s what I’ve learned so far:

a. God is always working upstream in our lives. Using the story of Jacob leading the people of Israel to the Promise Land (Joshua 3), the author reminds us that Joshua told the Isrealites that they had to cross over the Jordan but he didn’t mention that it would be in the time of the harvest season when the Jordan would flood! At any other time they could have waded through the waters but at harvest season?!!! Yet in vv. 15,16 as soon as the priests’ touched the water, God caused the water to stop flowing. In fact, the Bible later tells us that the water stopped completely, the riverbed dried up, and God’s people were able to cross over on dry ground!!! But this is the key thing…he didn’t stop the water where they could see it, v. 16 tells us that the water “piled up in a heap a great distance away, at a town called Adam”. God performed the miracle out of sight…some where upstream. Lesson for us? God is working upstream in all the situations we face, yes, even in the death and resusitation of my son. God was there for the, they just couldn’t see Him at work. He has been and will be there for us, even when we can’t see Him at work. We can rest assured that He’s working upstream.

b. As hard as it is to believe, even in the situation I faced this week between Mother’s Day and my wedding anniversary, Nothing ever happens to us that doesn’t ultimately accomplish God’s goals for our lives.

c. What we survive becomes a living mystery proclaiming God’s existence. “To be a witness does not consist in engaging propaganda, nor even in stirring people up, but in being a living mystery. It means to live in such a way that one’s life would not make sense if God did not exist.”

d. There’s another kind of miracle God does…While most of us pray for instanteous miracles, God usually prefers to utilize another kind of miracle that I don’t think most followers of Jesus think about, its called the perservance miracles. This is when God chooses not to remove the “problem” supernaturally or resolve the problem. Instead God gives his ongoing, miraculous strength to us to enable us to persevere through the problem. “To persevere means to stand up under a heavy trial, the way a bodybuilder lifts three hundred pounds over his head and stands up under it–arms shaking, knees ready to buckle, shoulders splitting with pain–without dropping the weights.

A great way to “see” this is using the Jars of clay analogy. Like jars of clay, we are frail, we break, we crack and fall to pieces. The author reminds us that “Clay pots dont’ hold up real well under extramarital affairs, depression, and bankruptcy. When we manage to keep our lives intact when they should be scattered across the floor in a million pieces, we–and others–realize that something supernatural is holding us together.”

I feel this way. After 27 surgeries, a marriage crisis that could have lead to divorce, financial problems, job loss, betrayals, and now almost losing my son, I know without a shadow of a doubt that God is holding this Latina together. I just hope after all this and whatever else is coming my way, that at the end of the journey, I turn out to be a beautiful person…

“The most beautiful people we have known are those who have known defeat, known suffering, known struggle, known loss, and have found their way out of the depths. These persons have an appreciation, a sensitivity and an understanding of life that fills them with compassion, gentleness, and a deep loving concern. Beautiful people do not just happen.” (Elizabeth Kubler Ross)

Today around 11 pm DJ was extubated! He is breathing on his own. Thank the Lord!!! Two IV lines were taken out, many meds stopped. Everyone is pleased with his progress. None more than his family. I am so elated at this moment (yes dead tired but overjoyed beyond belief). I am grateful for the prayers. Sorry I haven’t called some of you back, its been crazy and I know you understand.

One of the things that I do when I am forced into hospital time is read and reflect. Yeah, yeah, I read and reflect outside the hospital too but hospital RR is different from regular world RR. Its a different world. While everyone is going about their business in the real world, you are living in a bubble, hardly sleepy, totally not eating right and praying that Jehovah Rapha will show up. Soooo, with that said, reading and reflecting take on a different face when in this world. I started reading a book called Second Guessing God by Brian Jones and he starts out chapter 1 with:

There are …”Those who believe they believe in God, but without passion in the heart, without anguish of mind, without uncertainty, without doubt, and even at times without despair, believe only in the idea of God, and not in God himself.” (Miguel de Unamuno)

It’s 9:35 pm and this is a new update on DJ. All I can say is that we’ve been through a big one. Yesterday while most people were celebrating Mother’s Day I was in the ER praying that my little boy would survive. Long, long story short…he went into cardiac arrest 5 times was resusitated and is now stable. Although he is still in critical condition because he is still on a ventilator, the docs say he is heading in the right direction. With God’s grace and mercy, we may just get out of yet another close call and DJ may just make it out from near death yet again!

I can’t quite explain what it is like for a mother to see a frenzy of activity surrounding the life and death calls made my docs and nurses for her own child. I don’t think I had a tear left in me yesterday. My eyes hurt from so much crying and my heart still aches and seeing him so helpless in his hospital bed with tubes upon tubes coming out of him.

It is indeed a gift to be allowed to have a healthy child…those of you who have it never take it for granted. Perhaps you will have other pains as a parent because that is just parenthood on this side of heaven, but I pray that none of you ever have to deal with seeing your child die and come back from that place.

The hospital where I’m at has wireless in the rooms so while I type right now, DJ is right next to me. A flurry of people have come and prayed for us in the hospital room and I have just felt so covered in prayer. I am more at peace with all this now then I was 7 years ago when my journey with DJ started. I was super angry at God back then, today not so much. Its more of pain in the midst of accepting God’s sovereignty. I can’t do a thing, God alone decides.

Hiram and I do have a lot of decisions to make based on the wake up call of DJ’s fragile state and that may be at the cost of fulfilling our destiny…if the destiny we thought was ahead is indeed the destiny that God had planned. All we know is that right now, we can’t think of anything else then being the very best fully involved parents to both DJ and my older son, Samuel–who has definitely been affected by all this drama. And if God allows all things then maybe that is a message to us as well. We don’t think we can do it or have it all.

I want to thank those of you who have called, emailed, commented on this blog about your prayers for DJ and our family. Thank you from the bottom of my heart.

In hospital currently, DJ is stable but still on ventilator. Your prayers are being seen in affect. Thanks.

My Mother’s Day was not so hot. I did alot of crying today. I just got home from hospital to get some clothes because I will be sleeping there for a while. My son, DJ is in extreme critical condition at Joe DiMaggio Children’s Hospital. He was resusitated 5x today. They say it doesn’t look good for him.  While my hubby went with him to the ER, I had to go lead worship and preach today and then rushed to hospital to find them resusitating DJ for the 5th time. I thought I was going to lose him today. I had to tell my other son the "if he doesn’t make it he’ll be in a better place" line today. We both cried. I don’t know what this means for the future of anything, all I can say is that we don’t care about anything but our family right now.

If you pray, please lift us up in prayer. We recently won a settlement for DJ against a hospital in NYC, we’ve come this far, we knew life was fragile with him, but we did not expect for him to "go" yet. We want to walk out the hospital with him. This is our prayer. But our God has the last word on that one.

Thank you in advance for any and all prayers. They are appreciated.

Liz, Hiram and Sam

If you haven’t bought your mom, or wife a gift from Mother’s day yet, here are some tips on what not to buy:

Although the only person a man usually shops for is his wife, the whole experience is a stressful one. Many a man has felt extreme frigid temperatures for a long period based on a poor present decision. As a veteran of these wars, I’m still not sure what to buy my wife, but I’ll pass on what not to buy her:

1. Don’t buy anything that plugs in. Anything that requires electricity is seen as utilitarian.
2. Don’t buy clothing that involves sizes. The chances are one in seven thousand that you will get her size right, and your wife will be offended the other 6999 times. "Do I look like a size 16?" she’ll say. Too small a size doesn’t cut it either: "I haven’t worn a size 8 in 20 years!"
3. Avoid all things useful. The new silver polish advertised to save hundreds of hours is not going to win you any brownie points.
4. Don’t buy anything that involves weight loss or self-improvement. She’ll perceive a six-month membership to a diet center as a suggestion that’s she’s overweight.
5. Don’t buy jewelry. The jewelry your wife wants, you can’t afford. And the jewelry you can afford, she doesn’t want.
6. And, guys, do not fall into the traditional trap of buying her frilly underwear. Your idea of the kind your wife should wear and what she actually wears are light years apart.
7. Finally, don’t spend too much. "How do you think we’re going to afford that?" she’ll ask. But don’t spend too little. She won’t say anything, but she’ll think, "Is that all I’m worth?"

Herb Forst in Cross River, NY, Patent Trader, in Reader’s Digest, p. 69.

I am totally loving not having a 9 to 5 job because I finally have the time to write more (working on a book that I’ll probably self-publish, articles, chapters in other books) AND I have the time to read what I what to read. Two other books I recently read are "Yup, Nope, Maybe: A Woman’s Guide to Getting More Out of the Language of Men" and "Does This Dress Make Me Look Fat? A Man’s Guide to the Loaded Questions Women Ask" by Stephen James and David Thomas.

These books were printed to be companion guides to each other, although you certainly can read one without the other. I liked the small size of each book, it almost looked like a handy dandy notebook to carry with you when you were having a gender flare up.

In some regards, you would think that books like these are needed because the church as well as society in general still have gender battles revolving around roles, differences, relationships, SALARY.  With the new affluence and power of women in comparison to that of men, there has been and will continue to be much ‘reversal of roles.’  Women are earning more advanced degrees than men and we have organizations that promote equality for women in church and society. Organizations such as Christians for Biblical Equality which promote what I also believe the Bible teaches that there is full equality of men and women in Creation and in Redemption (Gen 1:26-28, 2:23, 5:1-2; 1Cor 11:11-12; Gal 3:13, 28, 5:1).

With all this in mind, I opened up the books with an open mind to see what these guys had to contribute to the conversation. What follows is what I liked and didn’t like about them:

Liked

1. size - easy to carry, put in purse, glove compartment, etc.
2. concept - with all the gender discussions think it was a good idea to have these books
3. titles - catchy
4. author tone - not preachy, not angry, but seemed authentically interested in reader
5. down-to-earth, kind of face-to-face feel to narrative
6. The list of tips at the end of each chapter

Disliked

1. Hard to follow and stay interested because of all the back and forth of "their" stories woven into the fabric of the book while they were often funny I wanted them to get to the point already

Being that Sunday is Mother’s Day and that on the 18th of May I will celebrate 17 years of marriage with Hiram (19 years total together), I figured I share some of the nuggets the authors shared in the Man’s Guide (which is the book I liked the best, maybe because I still couldn’t decode the manspeak after reading their book for women on men)…men out there learn this asap if you haven’t already!

• When a woman asks "Do I look fat?" she is really asking you Am I lovely? She is looking for confirmation of who she is because as the man in her life, your words are powerful.
• When a woman asks "Do you think that girl is pretty?" [which authors say would be asked of guys with wandering eyes or women who are insecure] they are really asking "Do you see me? Do you see the beauty in me? Am I worth another glance?

There are other loaded questions with the author intrepretations in the book "Does This Dress Make Me Look Fat?" as well as Code Dismantling in "Yup, Nope, Maybe". I think these are great giveaway books to people in the twenty-something range.

I finished reading Confessions of a Pastor by Craig Groeschel this past week and I have to say it was a real refreshner on all things ‘church’. First I applaud him that he actually was so honest and I mean HONEST…honest about:

• that he can’t stand alot of Christians
• that he has to work hard to stay sexually pure
• that most of the time he feels incredibly lonely
• that he hates prayer meetings
• that he worries almost all the time and sometimes doubts God
• that he feels completely inadequate
• that he has a hard time with criticism and finally…
• is afraid of failure

Did I mention he is a pastor and a mega church pastor at that! This book made me laugh, made me aware that I am so totally normal, and helped me to realize yet again that no matter how far any one of us gets in life we will always struggle with alot of things, including but not limited to the above list.

Craig said alot of meaningful things and shared stuff from his personal journey as a church planter and pastor of Lifechurch.tv. One of the quotes I highlighted from his book was "someone said that if you’re lonely at the top, it’s because you didn’t take anyone with you. They were so right"  this was in chapter 3 of his book where he shared about how very lonely he was while being around so many people in ministry. He reminded readers that God designed people to need each other. Relationships…they are tough to develop and once developed hard to maintain but they can make such a difference in our lives. I think most of us sucketh at this. I know I’ve come a long way in my relationships with hubby, family and friends–I communicate more, I will tell you when you hurt me, I will tell you when you are being stubborn, I will take what they have to say as well. I’ve also maintained friendships with people I’ve met in ministry and we’ll call each other just to vent, to laugh, to share a special moment like promotions, engagements, babies, etc. Moments with people that matter to us should be on the top of our list of things to do. In this world we live in everything else always seems to take priority. This summer I will be my son’s summer camp we’ll be visiting NY (because he was too young to visit most of the places NY is good for now he’s 10), Puerto Rico, taking a much deserved vacation to somewhere (looks like Atlantis) and just enjoying my time as a consultant (for $) but as a mom and wife.

Another chapter in his book that really made me think was chapter 9 speaking on his fear of failing. I’ve shared on this blog before that I think we are all in some way afraid to fail and bottomline, we don’t want to fail. The author shares "if you stop submitting to your fear of failure and start obeying God, you’ll never be the same. But I promise you, your spiritual enemy will do everything in his dark power to scare you away from God’s best." He shares that many of us "play it safe" and that people trying to avoid failure and pain, "abort their dreams and stop trying".

This was especially poignant to me because I think in this way sometimes. I want to stop everything because I get tired, feel I have no help, no support and just plain feel I should just do my own thing and forget about this church thing cause "I got my own problems" lol. That’s honest. But then something inside me tells me to stop being selfish, to align myself with this mandate of God to make a difference in the lives of others and to remember I am here to do God’s work not be comfortable, try to make a really great life "down here" and accumulate lots of "stuff". There is a webb and flow of planter emotions that really is a bummer for lack of a better term. However, this book was just a wonderful breath of fresh air for me…no one talking about great it is to be them, no one talking about all the success they had in all the ventures they pursued, no one trying to impress.

I really appreciated this book!  I say you go buy it for some "get down, get funky" kind of real talk not seen in most church circles.