Life's a symphony. . .

. . .with lots of grace notes. . .

when your best friend is coming for a long visit :-)

As the nation waits. . .

...for tomorrow's expected announcement of the nomination of a Supreme Court justice, I pray for God's hand on the process and the person. My prayers:

1) That the President nominate an individual with a strong commitment to originalism and strict constructionism

2) That this individual is under 60 years old and will be blessed with at least two decades of life and good health

3) That the confirmation will be swift and without bloodshed

UPDATE: One and a half of these prayers answered.

Grace notes

Tho' sometimes the path seems rough and steep

See His footprints all the way

~~from "He Keeps Me Singing"

by Luther B. Bridgers

Taking a long view...

I've often wondered when studying about major world civilizations that have come and gone-- Rome and its fall, for instance--what it was like to be living in the last years before the collapse. Would I have sensed it? Would I have been worried about what I saw? Would I have been listening for voices that articulated what I was vaguely feeling? Or would I have been one of the ones with my fingers in my ears, rearranging the chairs on my deck, making sure that I got all I could while the getting was good?

This morning I woke to a whispering of one of the voices to which I often listen. She's not shouting...she's not pontificating...she's not on a soapbox with some dogmatic tirade. She is telling us what she thinks she is seeing, and the degree to which it resonates out here in the country will tell us much about its validity. Yes, it's possible that everyone in the country might disagree with her even if she's right, but I suspect that there will be a lot of heads nodding today. There will be more than one serious thinker who will see words on a page expressing the knot he already feel in his stomach.

Those of you who know me will suspect that the referenced essayist is Peggy Noonan. Here's a taste of what she writes this morning in the Opinion Journal:

I think there is an unspoken subtext in our national political culture right now. In fact I think it's a subtext to our society. I think that a lot of people are carrying around in their heads, unarticulated and even in some cases unnoticed, a sense that the wheels are coming off the trolley and the trolley off the tracks. That in some deep and fundamental way things have broken down and can't be fixed, or won't be fixed any time soon. That our pollsters are preoccupied with "right track" and "wrong track" but missing the number of people who think the answer to "How are things going in America?" is "Off the tracks and hurtling forward, toward an unknown destination."

Please, read the whole piece and leave me your thoughts:

OpinionJournal - Peggy Noonan

Nightfall

It's been a difficult evening for me. As darkness fell, I had the strange sensation that I was being enveloped by the same night that would see us back to the hospital, back to "the jaws of the monster" as I described it to CJ today. The coming day will be one of uncertainty, of decisions, and perhaps of more pain. So this afternoon I distracted myself by diving into several hours' worth of school work and other chores, trying to forestall facing the coming night. Oddly, it didn't work.

So, at 7:15 in the morning CJ will undergo a cisternogram to try to find the location of her CSF leak. The risks of the actual test are not much greater than with any other lumbar puncture, but the two that CJ has already had brought on huge amounts of pain, and so it's very hard for me to give my assent to another. The alternative, though, is a continuation of the current pain and other symptoms, and possibly months or even years of keeping her life "on hold." She doesn't want that, and neither do I. . .so she's willing to risk this diagnostic procedure in the hope that it will lead to a permanent fix.

Good thing we're on personal terms with the only One who can "fix" her. Tonight, we place our faith in His goodness, in the fact that He loves her like none of us could ever hope to. His hands hold her and protect her in ways that surpass our understanding. They hold us, too. . . .He sustains us with new mercies every morning and with an army of family and friends who support and pray and walk with us through these days; we are grateful.

My cousin and forever-friend, who has walked much farther down this road than I hope I ever have to, reminded me tonight that "there are no words that describe the uncertainty, the hope a mother's heart holds for her child, the absolute reality that we would trade places if we could but God didn't set life up that way..."

She's right, there are no words.

Is there anything worse. . .

...than seeing your child suffer? It's just hit me in the last few days that I've never had this experience before. Yes, I've had sick kids, and I've even watched three of my daughters in labor...but I've never had to watch a prolonged suffering of one of my children, especially not when there was so little I could do to alleviate it or bring it to an end. In some sense I'm sure I should be grateful to have been a mom for 31 years without knowing this kind of pain...but today I'll admit that gratitude is hard to come by. When CJ is well again and all this is a memory, it will be easier to step back and look at the whole of this wonderful journey of mothering and be thankful for how clearly the blessings and the good times overwhelm the bad. But not today. Today I ache to take her pain away, to give her a good night's sleep, to give her her appetite back, to give her a clear view of the future. I can't do any of those things. I can bring aspirin and suggest treats and ask her if she'd like to watch a movie or buy a new book. Small comforts when you're having pain that has stopped your young life in its tracks.

What I can do is pray....not only for relief from the pain but for assurance that God knows the plans He has for CJ, plans to give her a hope and a future.

Grace notes

And when I think that God,

His Son not sparing

Sent Him to die, I scarce

can take it in!

~~from "How Great Thou Art"

lyrics translated from Swedish by Stuart K. Hine

Once again. . .

. . .I hope someone close to the President has put Peggy Noonan on his required reading list. I have run out of superlatives for this woman and don't know why she's not working at the White House.

It's Fall Break around here...

...and it sure would be nice if we'd have some nice fall weather to go along with it! But no, we're still pushing ninety here in the South Country, waiting to put out pumpkins until we can be sure they won't stew and rot on the porch.

In the meantime, we're enjoying the stand-down from our normal school routine while we catch up on doctor and orthodontist appointments, clothes shopping, and various other activities. I will do some more work on the Quicken set-up, and as you might have seen by the additions to my bookstack, I'm trying to teach myself some basics in html code and web design. While setting up my new blog this weekend, I got really curious about all the "why's" behind the templates and the formatting, and the more I tinkered the more curious I got. One discovery led to another, and before I knew it I was hooked! So a big part of MY fall break will be spent teaching myself a foreign language. Maybe soon I'll be "conversant" enough to be the family Webmaster :-)

Morning reading

Check out Mark Steyn's column in the Chicago Sun-Times. I really like a guy who will call a spade a spade, or in this case call an insurgent an Islamic militant. And kudos to the Toronto Star for being willing to be slightly politically incorrect. Most other papers these days ascribe to the maxim,

"There are no enemies, just friends whose grievances we haven't yet accommodated."

Follow that with Mort Zuckerman's excellent piece for USNews & World Report. Iraq and the war on terror may seem interminable, but in Zuckerman's words,

"One definition of American genius is lasting five minutes longer than the other side. This is no time to abandon that time-tested virtue."

okay, well since you asked. . .

. . .I'll tell you about my day.

After a detour of a couple of years, I've gone back to doing our "books" with Quicken. I said I'd never do it. . .but two factors converged to change my mind. The program that I've been using for three years did an "upgrade", an overhaul really, and it STINKS! And during the past year, things over on the Quicken side have really improved and so I decided to to give them another try. Doncha just love how software like this simplifies your life? I've been working twelve hours straight today--really, almost no breaks except for an hour or so to clean the kitchen, which was a welcome task after all the dollar signs and decimals. So twelve hours of work and I'm still looking at the help files and the conglomeration of numbers and wondering what in the world I'm doing! I've been doing our finances for thirty-two years (well okay thirty-one. John took over for one year until he gave it back to me in desperation with two dozen roses), and doing our taxes every year except two, and I feel like a kindergartner with this stuff. I'm not an engineer, but you guys know I'm not computer illiterate either. . .and yet every "upgrade" adds about four hours to the learning curve! Back when I last used Quicken it was simply an electronic version of a check register. But no, that's not good enough. Now it wants to be your tax accountant, your investment advisor, your retirement planner, your bill payer, your debt counselor. . .everything but your hors d'oeuvres chef, and I'm sure that's in the 2007 version! And of course I'm such a sucker for computer program bells and whistles that I have to try all this stuff out even if it kills me, and today, I think it has. Please, someone STOP ME!!

Late today I sent John out to find Quicken 2006 for Dummies but evidently there are a LOT of dummies like me and they were sold out. There must really be a market for stupidity. Now if I was REALLY smart I'd get it all figured out and then I'd start giving classes and I'd make a little money on the side that I could spend on that new software that cleans your house. But with my luck, by the time I start teaching the classes, Quicken 2007 will be up and I don't like making canapes, so I'd be unemployed. On second thought, that might mean fewer finances to track and right now that doesn't sound like a bad thing.

Grace notes

There is music in my soul today

A carol to my King

And Jesus, listening, can hear

The songs I cannot sing

~~from "Sunshine in My Soul"
lyrics by Eliza E. Hewitt

Oh say, can you see. . .

Bifocals. I got them in my fiftieth year after resisting them for a full year. Now, a year later, I'm still not used to them. They irritate me as often as they delight me. There are times when I love having the specialized lenses that make both reading and driving easier (and safer!); but because I don't wear them all the time like I should, the shifting back and forth between the top and bottom half is still a moderate annoyance. I find myself looking out at the road through the wrong half if they're not perched just right, and it looks like I'm driving in the ocean. Then I try to read something on my computer through the top half and I wonder where the print went. No, I haven't yet gotten the glasses with THREE lenses, and neither of the ones I have work for the mid-distance of the laptop screen. And I haven't had the patience to work it all out and make sure I'm always looking through the right lens.

Ah. . .it sounds a lot like my life.

In my public speaking I've done a lot of talking about looking at our children, our lives, through "long distance glasses," teaching young moms to make sure they're focusing on the long look at the big picture when their days seemed to be filled with small things. Many days I still need to be reminded of this. I'm looking through the reading half of my life lenses, and all I see are the small things. Dishes. Doctor appointments. Grammar lessons. Scissor tracks in my tablecloth. Birthday cards. It's very necessary for me to look through the lens that allows me to see these things clearly, because they're important. I want to take the attention with the small things that will form memories for my children and for me, the things that end up making up the big picture. But when I'm too focused on the small things, I look up for the big picture and it's a blur. It's an ocean in front of me and I've lost the ability to see it clearly. My attitudes get petty and my efforts become scattered. Life is incoherent.

On the other hand, there are days (and months, if I'm honest) that I'm so enamored of the big picture that the little things, the close-in view, gets neglected. I'm looking toward and planning for the future, imagining what things could be like in ten years and what I want to be building for eternity. . .I'm definitely wearing my long-distance lenses. And I look down at today's lessons or a pile of towels or the thawing hamburger and they're a blur. An annoyance. I've lost sight of how important they all are to the completion of the big picture.

So I need bifocals. Not just for my deteriorating retinas, but for my life. I need to work with both lenses, and maybe several sets of in-between lenses, to be able to keep all the parts of my responsibilities and joys in focus. And I need to submit them to the Great Physician/Ophthalmologist for regular checkups and regrinding in some cases. There are times when I think my vision through a certain set of lenses is 20/20 but He thinks differently. Just as when I've let myself go too long between eye checkups, I get used to the blurred vision, whether short or long. Then God hands me the new lenses and I'm startled by how much I've been missing: the indispensability of the peanut butter sandwich. . .the glorious hope of an eternity with Him, and an almost infinite number of focus-levels in between. I can live my life in supermarket reading glasses, or I can train myself to look through the right lenses, all of them in their season. . .

Grace notes

All the way, my Saviour leads me

What have I to ask beside?

~~from

"All the Way My Saviour Leads Me"

by Fanny J. Crosby

It's very nice. . .

. . .to have CJ back home, even if for just a couple of days, lying beside me with her laptop. She's still in a lot of pain, but she hasn't lost her sense of humor. Check out her blog, where she relates her day. . . .

a supreme chuckle

I don't agree with all of Ann Coulter's reasoning here , but you gotta admit she is one entertaining writer :-)

yeah, it's one of those nights. . .

. . .when I'd love to sit here in bed and write something melodic, something so vivid and picturesque that you'd immediately know what I'm feeling. It isn't in me tonight. I'm fried.

Heard a song on the way home from the hospital tonight, one I haven't heard in a long time. Not the kind my girls would quote from, but hey, I came of age in the seventies.

Doctor, my eyes have seen the years
And the slow parade of fears without crying
Now I want to understand

Well, today I'm sick of talking to doctors. . .these are questions I'll ask God. But tonight, the slow parade of fears threatens to mow me down.

A daughter lies in a hospital bed with unresolved pain and twenty holes in her arms and her back.

There are new concerns about my own health.

A dear friend and his family are facing a diagnosis of leukemia.

Other serious concerns in the lives of those closest to me.

"Now I want to understand."

I know. . .I have a God who understands and sees and is in perfect control. But tonight, just one night, I want to see too. That's what exhaustion does. It takes away my perspective and makes me prone to make demands of God. Just enough sight, Lord, to hold it all more loosely. Just enough light to keep me from feeling that I'm going to fall over the next surprise and never stop falling.

I don't have a neat way to wrap this all up. Tonight, it is what it is. . .

Doctor, my eyes
Cannot see the sky
Is this the price for having learned how not to cry