Evidences of maturity

There are the days when your child says something to you and your immediate reaction is Who on earth taught  you you could talk to me like that? or you say something to them and the ensuing eruption astonishes you with its sheer force ...and then there are mornings like this morning.

 

B comes upstairs.  "I think it might be pizza lunch today but my agenda doesn't say so and A is packing me a lunch.'

 

I thought A was sleeping in, as she has no school today, but there she is, packing his lunch.

 

"Did you ask A to pack your lunch?" I ask B.

 

"No, she's just doing it."

 

Ten minutes later, B has left for school, A's at the kitchen table eating cornflakes.  I let the dog out for a wee and check the time.

 

"Crap!  I meant to pack myself a lunch today, and I still have to pack up my laptop!" 

 

As I am packing up my laptop and planning where I'll buy lunch, I realize that A is packing my lunch as well.

 

Posting? what posting?

Every time I sit down to post something, a silly story about almost running out of gas, or a post about my lovely blossoming daughter and how lovely she looked in her mime makeup the other night, or how it's so easy to underestimate "the baby" just because he's three and a half years younger than his sister and then one day you realize he's much better at piano, or reading, or being brave, than you thought he was ...every single time, I type a few words and think -

What I really want to say is:

Pray for Jack.

My earlier post didn't make it clear, but Jack is my unborn nephew.

When we pray for Jack, our family, it's not just Jack on our hearts, our sweet sweet boy, violated in what should the safest and most sacred of places.  It's all the close calls and sudden losses we've been through together - the SIL we prayed for with all our hearts fervently, who is at least 5 years past her "five years cancer free", the prayers for safety in travel that were answered in the affirmative - and also our failed adoption, H & M's stillborn son, stillborn in spite of our most heartfelt prayers.  It's the fathers, mine and TechnoBoy's, who died before we could petition the throne on their behalf.  In every prayer that goes up for Jack, there is the acknowledgement that the miracle we are begging for is something our great and all-powerful God is more than capable of accomplishing, tempered by the absolute knowledge that that belief is not enough to save this boy's life.  There are caskets and gravesites and searing losses that remind us that sometimes, what we are called to is pain, that love and faith are not enough to make everything turn out the way we want them to, that suffering is a gift.  I believe that with my whole heart and I can look back at the times of greatest pain in my life and say beyond the shadow of a doubt that those times blessed me in ways that I would not have been blessed without them - but that's on the other side, with the buffering salve of years behind me.  It's not staring pain in the face, and being able to say "Bring it on."  Even if I could say that for myself, ( and I. Can. Not.), how could I wish that on two people I love with all my heart?

So please, pray for Jack, pray for all of us to stay afloat, every time you come here and I haven't posted anything new or anything else.

Pray for Jack.

HRM

So I brought my laptop to work today so that I would work on my book at lunchtime and I actually did it.

 

Net gain?  -50 words.

 

Maybe I’m doing something wrong (but I’m pretty sure he can’t eat lunch standing at the window and then realize at supper time that he hasn’t stopped for lunch.)

 

 

The promise was we'd be held

Held

      By Natalie Grant

Two months is too little.
They let him go.
They had no sudden healing.
To think that providence would
Take a child from his mother while she prays
Is appalling.

Who told us we’d be rescued?
What has changed and why should we be saved from nightmares?
We’re asking why this happens
To us who have died to live?
It’s unfair.

Chorus:
This is what it means to be held.
How it feels when the sacred is torn from your life
And you survive.
This is what it is to be loved.
And to know that the promise was
When everything fell we’d be held.

This hand is bitterness.
We want to taste it, let the hatred numb our sorrow.
The wise hand opens slowly to lillies of the valley and tomorrow.

(Chorus)
This is what it means to be held.
How it feels when the sacred is torn from your life
And you survive.
This is what it is to be loved.
And to know that the promise was
When everything fell we’d be held.

Bridge:
If hope is born of suffering.
If this is only the beginning.
Can we not wait for one hour watching for our Savior?

(Chorus)
This is what it means to be held.
How it feels when the sacred is torn from your life
And you survive.
This is what it is to be loved.
And to know that the promise was
When everything fell we’d be held.

We'd be held....

This is what it is to be loved.
And to know, that the promise was when everything fell, we'd be held.

This is what it means to be held

 

 

Well shoot

So last week I was totally out of work.

 

YAY, I thought.  I will have time to WRITE MY BOOK.

 

So I went to work and asked around for work for three days and got bits and pieces and one day, I asked my boss if I should bother coming in the next day and he said “No” and visions of a finished novel danced in my head and then someone said “Well I could should show you how to …”

 

SIGH.  And now, the work it does not stop.

 

I’m going to stop sleeping.

This is a test

If it worked, it will disappear instantly …

 

 

"In this world you will have trouble"

His name is Jack.

Please add your prayers to ours.