A Lot to Process, But Only One Focus.

I'm a horrible blogger. In fact, if you would ask if I was a blogger, I would tell you no. Like many things in my life, I blog, but am not a blogger. I play guitar, but I am not a musician. I work on my own car, but am not a mechanic. You get the point.

I have had several purposes for my blog. I have used it to process messages I have preached to help reinforce what I learned from them. I have used it to process events our life. And I have used it to 'remember' things from our life. Things like our canning and freezing every summer, or events that stuck with us.

Today, I am using it to help process, and to help fulfill my desire that God would be glorified.

Yesterday was one of the best days of my life. I am blessed to be piling these up. Getting engaged to Jen, marrying my sweetheart, being called to be a pastor, Finding out 11 times that we were expecting, 9 births in our immediate family, 11 nieces and nephews added to our family, not to mention other weddings, children's births, and some truly awesome days.

Yesterday we also received some of the toughest news we have received as parents. Just saying that makes me feel spoiled by how easy we have had it. The two miscarriages certainly rank higher, but when the doctor says "I know this is a lot to process," I guess that makes it in the list of tough things.

The short version of what we were told is that Timothy has a couple of holes in his heart. They are not the type of holes that close up on their own. He will need surgery sometime in the next year or so to deal with it. Currently, he is on oxygen and his blood platelet count is low. These are probably related to the holes in the heart.

We are truly blessed to be able to welcome this little one. We are blessed to have the awesome support of friends and family. We are blessed to have great care given to Timothy to diagnose and move forward with any issues that arise. We are blessed beyond measure with so many aspects of what is going on.

But we have needs.
We need to glorify God. It is part of who we are. As a child of God, I need to glorify my Father or something is desperately wrong. I want God to be glorified.
We need strength to care for Timothy (and Austin, Larissa, Robert, Jeremiah, Benjamin, Abigail, Jonathan and Joseph). We so often want the strength to come from within us, but we need the strength, and grace, that God gives.
We need wisdom. I am glad I do not have a list of the choices we will need to make in the next year. Or the next month. Or even this next week. But we will need wisdom.
We need our friends and family. Thank you to each of you. We may not always say it, but we love and appreciate all of you. Those that send encouraging words, those that pray, those that have met other needs. We do our best to appreciate all you do, but we fail miserably at expressing it as we should.

And we have wants.
We want Timothy to get well. We want a good night's sleep. We want comfort and ease. We want freedom from hard circumstances. We want to be independent and handle things on our own.

I want to keep glorifying God as the most important thing. As you pray for us, please pray that we will not let our wants lie to us or get in our way of us getting our needs met. Strength, grace, wisdom? All gifts from God. Promised. In a certain sense, already met.

I always like to end these with a verse. This one comes from a sermon from a few weeks ago

And this he said to prove him: 

for he himself knew what he would do.

- John 6:6

This is why I know my needs are already met. God already knew what He would do before we got the news. Before the Dr. knew the news. Before we knew we were expecting. I may not know what this week holds, but God already does, and He already knows how He will handle whatever comes our way.

The same thought from one of my favorite books and movies.

"I wish the Ring had never come to me. I wish none of this had happened!" (Frodo) 

"So do all who live to see such times but that is not for them to decide. All we have to decide is what to do with the time that is given to us. There are other forces at work in this world Frodo besides evil. Bilbo was meant to find the ring, in which case you also were meant to have it, and that is an encouraging thought!" (Gandalf)