I spent much of yesterday at my parents house so my mom could spend some time with Chris at the hospital.  Holly was napping, and Kelly was at school.  So Dad and I chatted while I made chocolate chip cookies (per the girls’ request to my mom) and then I stayed there with Holly while he went to get Kelly.  We spent the rest of the afternoon playing with play-doh and balls and bicycles.  While we were outside, the girls picked a bunch of marigold flowers and “re-planted” them in the garden dirt next to their teepee.  

And speaking of the teepee, Eric uploaded the pictures of the girls when Karen and I were down on Wednesday to his website.  Let me know if the link doesn’t work!

I’m reading a book by Madeleine L’Engle right now called A Circle of Quiet, and some of her thoughts have meant a lot to me this week: 

1.  “A Russian priest, Father Anthony, told me, ‘To say to anyone “I love you” is tantamount to saying “You shall live forever.”‘” 

• I read this quote early in the week, and I thought of Deb and Chris.  When we love someone, and choose tell them so, we affirm that person’s worth and meaning, we acknowledge that they are real, an eternal soul.  So it is in the moments when we lose, or almost lose, someone we love that we quickly drop all our pettiness and remember to say how much we love each other.  We need to remind them, and ourselves, that we matter, that our lives have counted for something bigger than our day timers might indicate. 

2. Then later in the book, L’Engle comments, “To matter in the scheme of the cosmos: this is better theology than all our sociology.  It is, in fact, all that God has promised to us: that we matter. That he cares.” 

• God hasn’t promised us an easy road or quick solutions.  He’s promised that we matter to him.  That he is with us no matter what.  That he cares about us.  

3.  And finally: “Then there’s a third way to live: to live as though you believe that the power behind the universe is a power of love, a personal power of love, a love so great that all of us really do matter to him.  He loves us so much that every single one of our lives has meaning; he really does know about the fall of every sparrow, and the hairs of our head are really counted.  That’s the only way I can live.”

• God says he loves us, so we must matter.  And this is the faith that I’ve seen in my brother, especially, this week as he lived out the belief that God’s love underscores everything that happens (even the bad things) and so we can face whatever the day holds.  I’ve watched him trust God in very dark hours.  I watched him have to make hard decisions about what was best at any given moment.  He’s gone to apologize to doctors when he thought it necessary, and he’s reached out to other hurting people.  Thanks, Chris, for living out a faith worth sharing!