Strange Times

Sometimes it feels like the days are speeding past...and at the same time, the hours of those days drag by. It seemed like my week just began, and yet the moments of it were full and lasted so long. I guess that's what happens when life stops being "normal", when all the regular, daily things aren't in the equation anymore and you are operating in the realm of the essential.

I saw a film once called, "We are Marshall". The town of Marshall had experienced a tragic plane crash that claimed the lives of many young football players. In one scene, the new coach is comforting a heartbroken former assistant coach and he tells him that he wants to get the town to where football is all that matters again. I get that.

It's funny how when things in life get serious, everything else seems so unimportant. I'm not sure, but I think this is what Peter may have meant when he wrote that he who suffers in the flesh is through with sin. When you suffer, you don't care for the waste and the foolishness. For some reason, suffering is purifying.

This week we spent every day, until yesterday, watching our normally active, laughing 7 year old incapacitated with fever. She would sleep almost the entire day, waking for just short periods, often crying from the pain.

It was purifying.

The nurse practioner, a doctor in a neighboring country, and a pediatrician in the States were all puzzled. Her symptoms fit everything and nothing. In the end, a suggestion from a local missionary, seemed to hold the key to her recovery. Today, Curly girl went swimming, played with her brother and sister, and stayed awake the entire day.

GOD spoke to me this week, not with words, but with understanding. I can't really explain it, but deep in me there was an understanding that GOD was not going to deliver us from this, HE was going to deliver us through this. UJ says GOD is never passive. This week I knew that....knew it so completely that it felt like it was part of me: GOD is active, HE is accomplishing something. Even though I couldn't see it, I knew that it was true. I'm not so brilliant to know and understand these things and it certainly wasn't my own strength coming through that dealt with it. The same GOD who gave me understanding, literally gave me strength to accept it.

HE has not yet revealed specifically what HE was doing, but there are some obvious consequences:

In a small way, I can identify with the ebony faced mothers all around me who are helpless as their children waste away in sickness....it's a very small way, I know, for my girl received medicine.

Another blessing is the compassion and love I saw working out between our children. When our five year old pranced around the house playing, many times as she passed her sleeping sister, she would stop and kiss her forehead before dancing off to the next room.

Mostly, it just made me love GOD more. When things were at their worst, the SPIRIT in me was abounding with affection for the FATHER. That is beyond explanation.

Those are just the things I can see...and as HE said, HE was doing something. I am so excited to one day see what that CREATIVE, EXTRAORDINARY GOD was up to on HIS side of things.

So, we watched a football game this morning. It was our favorite team, the Aggies. We cheered and hollered because, today, it mattered who won.