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)