I rise

Man it's been a week!  As you could have predicted, I was only kicking off the stomach bug...it has been a week full of fallen kiddos, long long nights, tons of laundry, hot water and bleach, crackers and gatorade, needing patience and more patience and grace and more grace.  We are still not through it, with one called home from school today and another not well tonight.

We've been doing an hour at a time...not anyone's favorite way to live, but sometimes just how it is.  The gift has been middle of the night prayers, early morning prayers, all day prayers...the Lord's been hearing from me overtime, bringing many people to my mind and heart throughout the long days and nights, meeting me as I've been lifting many up. There is a lot of broke...stomach-bugs being the most mild...that I can do nothing about but lift up again and again, and there is beauty in the lifting up and letting go.

I've had bunches of asking over dad, so thankful.  Tomorrow is his last chemo, and next he starts seven weeks of radiation at Cleveland Clinic, every day M-F.  The radiation isn't long each day, but due to it being incredibly specialized and intense, he'll need to be there in Cleveland those seven weeks, so he and Cindy will be spending much of the summer there, going back to Columbus on the weekends.  That's all been an adjustment to process, and please just keep praying with me as they prepare for and settle into this next step of battling angiosarcoma.  

Haiti is struggling, struggling. But Emmaus is celebrating graduation tomorrow all the same, and I wish I could be among them.  The family of Emmaus is always reminding me that the Lord is still at work, headlines behind.  

Thank you for praying for us, dear ones. We are in need and grateful.

Tribulation is never a grand, highly welcomed event; but whatever it may be --whether exhausting, irritating, or simply causing some weakness--it is not able to separate us from the love of Christ.  

Can't God's love continue to hold fast, even when everyone and everything around us seems to be saying that His love is a lie, and there is no such thing as justice?

Can't we believe in the love of God but also be more than conquerors, even when we are being starved?

Either Jesus Christ is a deceiver, or else some extraordinary thing happens to someone who holds on to the love of God when the odds are totally against him. Logic is silenced in the face of each of these things which come against him. Only one thing can account for it - the love of God in Jesus Christ.

Out of the wreck I rise, every time.

O Chambers  on Romans 8:35