This and That

I didn't get many pictures from our camping trip the first week of June. I suppose the rain put a damper on my yen for photography. But by Sunday when we were returning home the sun had come out. We stopped by Blackwater Falls State Park in West Virginia and hiked down the trail to see the water. Actually, we heard it long before we could see it! The two days of rain we had endured blessed us with a river running at high capacity. We overheard a lady say she hadn't seen the falls this big in a long time.

"and His voice (was) as the sound of many waters." Revelation 1:15

"And I heard, as it were, the voice of a great multitude, as the sound of many waters and as the sound of mighty thunderings, saying, "Alleluia! For the Lord God Omnipotent reigns!" Revelation 19:6



Last week Sharon's parents came up for 4 1/2 days. We so enjoyed having them here. On Friday they gave Sharon a break by taking the oldest 3 out on an adventure. The highlight of the trip was visiting (not the hospital!) but the Wolfgang Candy factory tour. Jacob didn't want to wear the funny hat at first but he gave in and enjoyed himself. Sharon's dad said that they run a metal detector over all the finished boxes to make sure no machinery has come loose in the process. (Talk about a chocolate covered nut!)

On Saturday I took the family out for a driving tour with a couple of stops planned. God had planned a massive rainstorm instead. We did get in one stop before it poured. About 10 minutes from us is an old grist mill that still works. The kids weren't much on the historical part, but they liked seeing the water wheel turn. Before leaving we went up to the 3rd story where the grain used to be stored and I got a picture of them (Sharon was at home with the napping ones.)

Speaking of napping ones. . .

See what happens when mom goes out for an errand? I know, I know, "he'll sleep in the jumpy chair, but he won't sleep as long as he would in his crib." But he's so precious sleeping like that.

Back in March I took Lydia to see Little Women. I had procrastinated on a Papa and Jacob special trip, but he has been asking, so in light of everything lately, I took action. We drive by a mini golf place on the way home from church, and he often says he wants to go there. So today we went. I had debated going out to a lake and renting a boat, but this is where he had said he wanted to go, so that settled it. Here we are just getting ready to go golfing.

(he was smiling, just not at the moment I took the picture. . .)

He had to work at it a while to get the ball up the little ramp, but when he did, it went in the middle hole and right into the cup!

Golfing inside the pirate cave. He was worried his ball would roll into the water on the left and go over the waterfall.

This golf place has a pirate theme with waterfalls, caves, and a pirate ship. One hole is even on the ship.

The 18th hole. When your ball falls into the cup here, it rolls down a pipe into the well. At the end of the day they take the cover off and pull up the bucket with golf balls. I told him to hold up his club like it was a sword.

It was pretty warm in the sun, and I think a 9 hole course would have been perfect for him. By hole 10 he was "getting tired." Not physically, I think, but bored and hot. When we got ready to leave, he asked, "Is this all we do here?" I think the waterfalls and pirate ship looked like there should have been more fun involved. So we stopped at Wawa and got some drinks. Any size up to 32oz was 99c, so I figured I'd get a big one for him and drink what he couldn't. Who would think that a 6 year old could drink a quart of cherry Coke? (I did drink some, but he complained about that.) We had a coupon for a free small fry at Burger King. He wanted ketchup and the best I could find was to pump it out onto a drink cup lid. Put a plastic drink cup lid full of ketchup on top of a pair of soccer shorts and you have a recipe for disaster--or at least for tomato paste all over the front seat, as it turned out! We tried to find something else to do for fun. We drove by Strasburg and saw the trains, but everything closed up at 5. But then he wanted to know how much longer till we were home. Before we pulled in the driveway I asked if he had had a good time. He said, "I got to go with you and we got to do some fun things." That's all I needed to hear! (By the way, we had bought some gumballs that look like baseballs--that's the white wad you see in the corner of his mouth--not a massive tooth!)

In the words of C. S. Lewis

I've been doing some reading in C. S. Lewis lately. I was aware of the book he wrote following his wife's death. In A Grief Observed, he chronicles the feelings and thoughts he had while in the fresh experience of her passing into glory. Naturally, when I wanted to get a copy I couldn't go to Amazon and get just that one book. A little searching led me to "The Complete C. S. Lewis Signature Classics," which is (as I discovered upon receiving it) a coffee table size book with marker ribbon. It contains 7 of his books.

A Grief Observed is a short book which I got through just last night. This morning I was reading in The Great Divorce, which is his story about an imaginary trip to heaven and hell. As with many of his books, he is not trying to describe either place as it truly is, but along the journey there is much truth to be gained about eternal realities. I've not gotten through the book yet--I'm sort of doing some touch-and-go flying through it--but a few sentences seem so poignant and fitting, especially considering the name of this little blog:

But Heaven is not a state of mind. Heaven is reality itself. All that is fully real is Heavenly. For all that can be shaken will be shaken and only the unshakeable remains.

C. S. Lewis, The Great Divorce, Chapter 9

Unshakeable Joy

When I began this blog in December, I had little idea of the turns our lives would take in such a short time. The other day mom remarked how it could not have been an accident that I would choose such a name for our blog. Paul wrote in Philippians that he had "not already attained." We would use those words for ourselves in regard to this joy. We are trusting that God would build this into our lives as the days progress so that our lives would be a testimony to his strength in what for us looks like an undesirable and even unbearable future.

It has been a few weeks since I last posted. In between we spent about 4 days camping in WV with our extended family (2 of which contained rain of seeming Noahic proportions). We enjoyed some time with the cousins back home in the Baltimore area during the next week even though there was a strain of viral fever running through the little ones.

The past two weeks have not been so easy. Two weeks ago tomorrow we had official diagnosis of Jacob's difficulty in the form of muscular dystrophy. There are various types of this, but he has the type that tends to degenerate the most quickly. The typical cause of this is a mutation in one of the mother's X chromosomes which causes the body to not produce the protein dystrophin which gives strength to the muscles. Without going into lots of genetic information, we have learned that women are generally carriers with few or no symptoms and that boys are the one most likely to suffer the effects of the disorder.

Last week Sharon's parents came up for a few days (just leaving this afternoon). We had an appointment on Thursday at Hershey Medical which has an MDA clinic. This allows patients to see all the necessary doctors without traveling all over the place and also keeps the doctors more in touch with each other. Having her parents here was a blessing, both for the fellowship and the help with the girls. Since it rained on Thursday it was easier for me to get off of work and go with Sharon to the appointments--neurologist at 9 and cardiologist at 10.

We knew it would be a challenge to be in the medical center surrounded by other patients, but we prayed for grace and God allowed us to meet another lady who appears to be a Christian and whose 12 year old son has MD. She lives in Reading and asked for our email, so we will be able to stay in touch with her. I am sure that will be a help as they are a few more years down the road than we are. While we do not have a prophecy of the future and while we know that none of us is promised another breath, we are learning the sobering facts about this disorder. We are grateful that we have not seen signs of deterioration at this point, but we know that things will most likely be much different in 5 years. People with this disorder usually lose their ability to walk by their early teens and rarely survive their 20s.

We have seen spiritual good beginning to come in our lives as we feel suddenly like a man aroused by the fire alarm at 3 am. Life has taken on a sudden urgency and instantly there seems to be a reshaping of priorities. As the song says, "the things of earth will dim and lose their value when we recall they're borrowed for a while." It is one thing to talk of eternity when you are 35 and the average life expectancy is 70--quite another when eternal realities suddenly seem just around the corner. We all know that life is uncertain and but a vapor, but when things like this arise, suddenly that knowing is an intense feeling. It is one thing to talk about heaven by-and-by, quite another to suddenly feel desperately like these eternal realities must be true and must be more glorious than this life if we are to have hope.

Spiritual good is eternal good, but as we are now still in the flesh we do not always rise above the challenges. There have been tears and I am sure many more await us. But suddenly the promise that every tear will be wiped away takes on significant meaning. What does that promise hold for people like us who have, up till now, not had too much to cry over in life? We have much to work through at this point. We want to use this as an incredible impetus for renewed spiritual vitality as we contemplate the real possibilities of the next years. But we also do not want to despair of God's intervention on Jacob's behalf. There is no cure for MD at this point and there is not much they can do to even alleviate the condition, but we pray that God will delay the trouble. The doctors say that every year new things are coming out for various conditions and hope may be around the corner. But we cannot rest our joy or happiness on that. We have both said we do not feel like "why us?" but "why not us?" We do not want to give up the ship without a fight. Jacob of old wrestled with God till he prevailed. Even David, when faced with a Prophecy about his son's death, did not feel despair in praying for his healing. ("While the child was alive, I fasted and wept; for I said, 'Who can tell whether the LORD will be gracious to me, that the child may live?'" 2 Sam 12:22) We don't want to be despairing of healing nor place our only hope in healing.

Our greatest prayer must be, "Lord, don't take him away until you call him to yourself." We do pray so urgently that we would see significant signs of conversion in him as well as the girls. We ask that God would give him a profoundly grace-filled heart to go with a body that is not strong. We pray that he would have the privilege of doing much eternal good in his life, however long. Jesus died at 33, Jim Elliot at 28, Henry Martyn at 30, David Brainerd at 29.

We still do not know when or what to say to the kids. Jacob still asks why he has to go to the doctor so much when he isn't sick and doesn't have a disease. We don't know what good the knowledge would do them at this point and think it might only do harm by causing him to think he can't do something when he really still could.

I know that it has really helped change my direction. Yesterday I went out to cut the lawn with a push mower. Jacob came out and wanted to help. We had to stop once because he got tired, but he stuck with it and we mowed the whole lawn. Two months ago I would have insisted on doing it myself because it took 3 times as long to do it with him--walking more slowly, holding the handle at an angle that was good for him but that hurt my back, taking every turn at a snail's pace--but now I wouldn't trade those 2 hours for the world. I am quickly losing my task-focus and getting a people-focus to my jobs.

I guess I could go on for a long time about the hopes, the fears, the lessons, and all the other stuff that is going on right now, but I will finish this out. I can only say that never before has the eternal, invisible, spiritual realm felt so necessary. Without it, we have nothing. Every physical object or person in our lives can be taken away. If we have our happiness or joy in anything that is visible, we are at risk of losing our joy, because Paul reminds us that the things that are seen are temporary. Only when we can truly say our joy and happiness lies in God and in eternity are we safe from the dangers of this world.

Therefore we do not lose heart. Even though our outward man is perishing, yet the inward man is being renewed day by day. For our light affliction, which is but for a moment, is working for us a far more exceeding and eternal weight of glory, while we do not look at the things which are seen, but at the things which are not seen. For the things which are seen are temporary, but the things which are not seen are eternal. 2 Corinthians 4:16-18