Possibilities

The weekend before last I drove my three youngest to Hendersonville, N.C., where my dad lives so they could go to camp.  My dad feels it was a valuable experience he had and so he sent me and my sister to camp as well as the grand-kids. This year my sister Cathron's kids are going to camp with my kids, she stayed the week with my dad and then took my kids home with her to Indiana until July 7th when she is coming to Florida. I came home after a few days in N.C. because Stef was supposed to be moved from Shands Jacksonville to Shands Gainsville and we didn't know how soon they would do surgery.

Between going to a funeral  last week and visiting Stef at the hospital in Gainsville I haven't felt a wide expanse of free time that one would generally feel if three of their four children weren't at home. I made a list of possible projects I should work on over the next couple of weeks...so far nothing has been checked off.


That funeral really put me in a funk.

I'm sure the Holland family is feeling it way more than I am but I guess I'm just surprised how it has affected me.
I didn't even really know her.
A couple of years ago we were in a small group with her and her husband, then the next year when small groups changed we were in one with her daughter and her husband but that's been over two years ago since then.
Sigh.
The week before taking the kids to camp/the last week of school, I spent four out of the five days hanging with Stef at the hospital here in Jacksonville.  We had a couple of good talks about what salvation means to her and I helped her fill out her living will.  She initiated the conversations.  She told me she was scared and it all went from there.
Sigh.
She's asked for a chaplain every day since going to Gainsville and one hasn't come by yet.  I've got the name and number of a pastor that might be able to go by and see her before her surgery tomorrow.
The surgeons are giving her very good odds of coming through the surgery but the reality of how weak her heart and lungs are do not lend itself to confident expectations.

I didn't go over yesterday and I won't go over there today, all the family has arrived back....they came 10 days ago when the last surgery was scheduled but went home when the surgery was  then cancelled in pre-op because the surgeon wanted someone with congenital heart defect experience to operate.

 I'll go over tomorrow after I do my morning run.
I may be signing up to do a marathon in December.
Craig has been talking about doing one and then a bunch of gals from church just signed up for one and that has kinda motivated me to think of it as a possibility.

Remember singing that song when you were a kid...
I am a promise
I am a possibility
I am a promise with a capital "P"
I am a great big bundle of potentiality
And I am learnin' to hear God's voice
And I am tryin' to make the right choice
I am a promise to be anything God wants me to be.


I just wish it was more clear what I'm supposed to be.


How precious to me are your thoughts, O God! How vast is the sum of them! Were I to count them, they would outnumber the grains of sand. When I awake, I am still with you.

Psalm 139 : 17-18 

Grace will lead me home

Today I went to my second funeral in 2010.
And like the first one, I had never met the man but I knew his son and was friends with his daughter-in-law.
Both were Catholic, and born in other countries.
I was sad for the families and sad for my family still mourning Stephen which naturally a funeral service brings up.
The priest said a prayer that seems to express a very unruly thing about deaths:

"Dispel the darkness and doubt that comes with grief."

Amazing Grace was playing on the radio after the service while waiting for the procession to the grave. Immediately I was back in my sister's excursion heavy leaden and wondering if Gloria was feeling the same way. It's a burden that does not shake easily.
I came home and took a nap.
Tonight I went out to the car to get my funeral service and saw my note from one of the readings, The Book of Wisdom, and looked it up on Google and found it right away.

The souls of the just are in the hand of God

and no torment shall touch them.

They seemed, in the view of the foolish, to be dead;

and their passing away was thought an affliction

and their going forth from us, utter destruction.

But they are in peace.

For if in the eyes of men, indeed they be punished,

yet is their hope full of immortality;

Chastised a little, they shall be greatly blessed,

because God tried them,

and found them worthy of himself.

As gold in the furnace, he proved them,

and as sacrificial offerings he took them to himself.

Those who trust in him shall understand truth,

and the faithful shall abide with him in love:

Because grace and mercy are with his holy ones,

and his care is with his elect.

I will be praying for the Perez family to know the joy that is theirs in Christ Jesus, even though at this time it seems like Joy has hidden her face and only sorrow has moved in.