Updates

Thank you all for your prayers.  We had our first meeting with a doctor today, and he and we will be developing a path forward for Ana.  We were very thankful for the time and evident care he had for Ana, and the nurses were wonderful, as well.  Our marching orders were to keep Ana going on good food and drink (though not aggressively, letting her pace it and keeping an eye on her throughput) and to apply for our state's long-term disability coverage and begin that process.

Having once been rather Libertarian (and now, I hope, a better Christian than that), this was (and may continue to be) hard to swallow.  But, help comes where God gives it, and if the state is going to offer such services, we will investigate them. 

Our church family has been very kind in providing some meals, and we had an excellent Sunday morning - Ana made it through Sunday school (with Papa, teaching the high-school kids) and service (with Papa, mostly in the cry room or walking around outside the doors so Papa could hear most of the sermon).  We will not be attending evening service for some time, to ease the stress on her (and us), especially since our church is a 50-mile round trip from our house.  This makes me sad, since our evening service is poorly attended, and I love to open and close the Lord's day in the Lord's house, but I think it would be driving the kids too hard.

Papa is back at work some, though officially on leave. There are things that do not wait for families - and I am developing a distaste for them...  but I am thankful that God uses my job to provide for my family at this time.  I am also thankful for the kindness that I occasionally find in the whitewashed tomb of academia, from students who ask after Ana to a co-worker who seemed nearly to cry when I told her we were home and well.  God is good, and His common grace is poured out all around us - this, I think, is the rightful burden of Hopkins' As Kingfishers Catch Fire:

As kingfishers catch fire, dragonflies draw flame;

As tumbled over rim in roundy wells

Stones ring; like each tucked string tells, each hung bell's

Bow swung finds tongue to fling out broad its name;

Each mortal thing does one thing and the same:

Deals out that being indoors each one dwells;

Selves — goes itself; myself it speaks and spells,

Crying Whát I dó is me: for that I came.

I say móre: the just man justices;

Keeps grace: thát keeps all his goings graces;

Acts in God's eye what in God's eye he is —

Chríst — for Christ plays in ten thousand places,

Lovely in limbs, and lovely in eyes not his

To the Father through the features of men's faces. 

 

Will you please pray that God will speedily accomplish the sale of our condo?  We had a buyer lead us along for perhaps six weeks, just before the pickup trip, and then walk away while Papa was in Bulgaria getting Ana.  We had been counting on that to settle some adoption expenses, like the trip, and now we will wait and see what God will do.  There are many things that I could gripe about, but instead I should give thanks to the God who accomplishes all things well, large and small; and we know that being stretched is how you grow.  And I am thankful to you all, our larger family in Christ's holy and catholic church, for your support in prayer.

It is a good reminder, may God let all our goings graces be, as Christ, reflecting God the One in Three.

In Christ,
Papa