19
Oct

A New Week

D&D.  Stephen & James broke out a new campaign tonight and had Faith join them.  Something about needing more characters to fight monsters alongside them or something.  It was so nice tonight to feel like we could blog and play.  Yay for sleeping toddlers!

D&D. Stephen & James broke out a new campaign tonight and had Faith join them. Something about needing more characters to fight monsters alongside them or something. It was so nice tonight to feel like we could blog and play. Yay for sleeping toddlers!

I bought some new entertainment this week.  Grace, Garnet and Samuel spent quite a bit of time playing together.  The time away is (as always!) bonding them closer.

I bought some new entertainment this week. Grace, Garnet and Samuel spent quite a bit of time playing together. The time away is (as always!) bonding them closer.

Oh Chick-Fil-A - I so do love your yummy grilled wraps and BBQ sauce.

Oh Chick-Fil-A – I so do love your yummy grilled wraps and BBQ sauce.

Shoo Fly Pie.  Samuel and Isaiah spent one evening practicing saying that.  :)  Yummy, but super densely sweet!

Shoo Fly Pie. Samuel and Isaiah spent one evening practicing saying that. 🙂 Yummy, but super densely sweet!

I spent many hours holding Isaiah upright to keep him comfortable.  He was so swollen form the waist down after his surgery.  Can you see how his feet are totally opposite to how they were when we left home a month ago?  Amazing!  Plus, who doesn't love the striped casts?

I spent many hours holding Isaiah upright to keep him comfortable. He was so swollen form the waist down after his surgery. Can you see how his feet are totally opposite to how they were when we left home a month ago? Amazing! Plus, who doesn’t love the striped casts?

It rained so hard that the roof in our century plus house leaked - fortunately, only into the master shower.

It rained so hard that the roof in our century plus house leaked – fortunately, only into the master shower.

Last week.  Oh, last week.

We all just felt like we were barely holding on.  But we made it.  We made it.

Isaiah did his semi-retreat tonight as we readied him for bed and prepared for tomorrow at the hospital.  But he had just had a really, really normal sort of day, and it wasn’t more than a minute or so and he settled in for sleep  This weekend just got better and better.  We slept, ate, played, caught up on some schoolwork.  Stephen’s back is even unknotting little by little.

So thankful to head into this week feeling like we have a bit of margin.  Hoping that when he realizes that he won’t be having surgery, just cast changes and brace fittings, he’ll settle in to his routine there.  His routine involves a lot of unhappiness, but it is familiar by now and hopefully he’ll be able to process that.

The other kids are really doing so much better.  Colds have passed. Play has resumed and they are talking about things they want to do. All good things.

Surgery weeks are always tough but this one seemed to pile it on, but we weren’t alone.  I have been so thankful for friends and family who came alongside us these past days.  You all mean so much to us.  When we felt at our most exhausted and stretched, you kept us focused on the fact that we weren’t walking through this alone.

Please keep on praying for Isaiah’s heart.  While his body seems like the most vulnerable part of him, his sensitive spirit is struggling to hold on.

My prayer this week has been thankfulness for God’s care for my little boy.  Just like Mephibosheth, God hasn’t forgotten my Isaiah. Not for one day of his life. He took a little boy from a rural area in China and brought him through a series of seemingly random events to a family in Canada, and is being treated by two of the foremost teams of specialists for his arthrogryposis in the whole world.  How can I doubt His care for me too?  His goodness in our exhaustion? His tenderness in my need to control?  And for those scholars out there that would like to point out the fact that this passage illustrates a common middle eastern tradition of restitution, that is true. But to me, he was a man whom everyone had forgotten.  Maybe even, Mephibosheth, thought he was forgotten.  But he didn’t escape God’s notice.  Nope. he was brought to the forefront of the king’s household and cared for with honour for the rest of his life.  I take so much joy in these words.  God knows our needs.  We aren’t journeying alone through life.  As long as we draw breath, His eye is on us and our story is not over.  Good stuff to contemplate, yes?

2 Samuel (2 Samuel 9:1-13):

9 David asked, “Is there anyone still left of the house of Saul to whom I can show kindness for Jonathan’s sake?”

2 Now there was a servant of Saul’s household named Ziba. They summoned him to appear before David, and the king said to him, “Are you Ziba?”

“At your service,” he replied.

3 The king asked, “Is there no one still alive from the house of Saul to whom I can show God’s kindness?”

Ziba answered the king, “There is still a son of Jonathan; he is lame in both feet.”

4 “Where is he?” the king asked.

Ziba answered, “He is at the house of Makir son of Ammiel in Lo Debar.”

5 So King David had him brought from Lo Debar, from the house of Makir son of Ammiel.

6 When Mephibosheth son of Jonathan, the son of Saul, came to David, he bowed down to pay him honor.

David said, “Mephibosheth!”

“At your service,” he replied.

7 “Don’t be afraid,” David said to him, “for I will surely show you kindness for the sake of your father Jonathan. I will restore to you all the land that belonged to your grandfather Saul, and you will always eat at my table.”

8 Mephibosheth bowed down and said, “What is your servant, that you should notice a dead dog like me?”

9 Then the king summoned Ziba, Saul’s steward, and said to him, “I have given your master’s grandson everything that belonged to Saul and his family. 10 You and your sons and your servants are to farm the land for him and bring in the crops, so that your master’s grandson may be provided for. And Mephibosheth, grandson of your master, will always eat at my table.” (Now Ziba had fifteen sons and twenty servants.)

11 Then Ziba said to the king, “Your servant will do whatever my lord the king commands his servant to do.” So Mephibosheth ate at David’s[a] table like one of the king’s sons.

12 Mephibosheth had a young son named Mika, and all the members of Ziba’s household were servants of Mephibosheth. 13 And Mephibosheth lived in Jerusalem, because he always ate at the king’s table; he was lame in both feet.

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