Monday 2:45am

You’ve started to come out of sedation a little bit today and our family is glad to see you open your eyes but when we can hardly look past the expressions of pain in your eyes and on your face. I imagine you’re probably frustrated to be in so much pain, unable to articulate your desire for relief, yet I am standing in front of you with a big dumb smile on my face. My hope is that as you wake more and more you won’t flail around and disrupt the machine that helps you breath. I’m sure the doctors have anticipated such complications though. When I said in my last entry that all things are fleeting I meant to encourage you to endure all things in order to posses that which lasts eternally. In the presence of the Lord joy forever dwells, pain and sorrow will leave, as will every other indication that this world is something less than perfect. This world and everything unrighteous about it will pass away, so we say everything is fleeting. But there are specks of eternity in this world, they are imperfectly seen, yet they do exist because ours is an amphibious world, subject to two states of being (both temporal and eternal). Our world and everything in it will pass away and be extinguished yet souls and the activities of our souls that dwell herein are eternal. While the temporal part of you undergoes this hostility from illness your eternal soul is being refined and made more precious if you endure this trial with the righteousness that God imparts to those who love Him. So love Him because He loved you first and because He endured a grief much greater than yours to demonstrate His love for you. We show our love for Him by obeying His commandments and by giving Him praise during all things. When you think you have a rod of fire running down your throat, hallelujah, when you’re afraid you may never catch your breath, hallelujah, when you think nobody understands the crippling pain you feel then remember He does understand, and hallelujah! Give Him praise with joy and when you find that you cannot, then ask Him to restore the joy of your salvation and renew a right spirit within you. Tell your soul to hope in God.

“Why are you cast down, O my soul, and why are you in turmoil within me? Hope in God; for I shall again praise Him, my salvation and my God”. – Psalms 42