Making Room

The boys don't make room, and I love them for that. When they sit next to you, they sit next to you. Or on you. At some point we grow up and we learn to make room. Maybe it's a good thing, but I'm not so sure. It seems vaguely tied up with isolation and making sure I keep what's mine.

Joseph's birthday is Saturday, and he is really pumped. The boys have had two birthdays while Melissa has been undergoing treatment. Like anything else you try to plan, there are pitfalls. How will she feel? Will there be some thing like going to the hospital to get in the way of the plans? More than anything, I want the boys to be able to stop and just be what we all want little kids to be: care-free.

I have been spending some time reading about Joseph, particularly in the New Testament. My fascination with him grew of course, because of our own Joseph. But also with an early church writer who said God chose Joseph to care for Jesus because He knew the devil was too vain to look in a humble place for the son of God! Matthew 1-3 is where you find Joseph. Go back and read it and be amazed by the man you've forgotten-- the one who heard from God quite a bit, took personal risks, and raised quite a boy. Tellingly for our age, Ignatius, an early church Father (early 2nd century) says that Joseph protected Jesus even in the womb, by still marrying Mary when she could have been stoned for being pregnant out of wedlock.

Joseph means "The Lord has added to" because He surely did increase our joy.

Melissa had a seizure yesterday in the clinic. A very difficult thing because she has not had one in 8 years, and not only did I obviously hope we could avoid it, we avoided when it seemed likely she would have one-- run-up to the transplant, changing her very successful anti-seizure med, etc. It revealed how much we're all on edge. We get generally good news about her progress. But a seizure crops up and my first thought was the radiation has fried her brain or the cancer has spread further in her brain and now they'll tell us, "Well, good fight, sorry about your luck."

The inevitable questions: why does she still have seizures? why didn't God stop it? why doe she have cancer? when will it be gone? will it be gone? Psalms are more important than ever right now.

Two years ago around this time, I was in California, and while there was scheduled to read Psalm 121-- so much to tell about that Psalm in that place! Today, I am scheduled to read Psalms 111-115. So I have stayed about on schedule; if you read 5 Psalms a day, you will get thru the book in 1 month, 12 times a year. If you can keep up this discipline consistently, it will do more than anything I know for your prayer life. It will increase your ability, desire, vocabulary, and (most important for our days) endurance for prayer.