Returning to the Land of the Smiles.

If you are interested in reading our latest newsletter explaining our upcoming plans to return to Thailand on July 5th click here.

Photo by Jonathan Fox.

big, bright tears.

I'm currently reading the book, "God on Mute Engaging in the Silence of Unanswered Prayer" by Pete Greig. The author's wife has been diagnosed with a brain tumor, so his perspective is from his own place of questioning on a difficult journey.

Though I've just begun the book, much of it has resonated with my own thoughts and feelings during Olive's life, and in the months since her death. He talks some of the crisis of faith that seems to occur when people going through trauma continue to pray and see those requests unanswered over and over...and that eventually it becomes common to stop asking God to intercede.

The author reflects on the fact that in those moments of crisis our prayers become less and less eloquent...in fact they often don't even seem like prayers at all...sighs, tears, and questions...but those "prayers" are still valuable, and perhaps the most simple and sincere ones we will ever pray.

After a few books that I've been reading, and different conversations with loved ones I've found myself starting to rest in the concept that God may be weeping with us in our darkest of moments...not because He's powerless to intercede on our behalf...but maybe because He can see things we can't.

Here is an exert from the book, "God on Mute Engaging the Silence of Unanswered Prayers," by Pete Greig:

In the first of his Narnia Chronicles, The Magician's Nephew, C.S. Lewis tells the story of a boy named Digory whose mother is dying. 

When Digory first encounters the great lion Aslan, he gathers his courage and asks, "May I--please, will you give me some magic fruit of this country to make Mother well?" It's a heart-rending request--a prayer of desperation--and yet, at the time, Aslan appears to ignore it completely:

He had been desperately hoping that the Lion would say "Yes"; he had been horribly afraid it might say "No." But he was taken aback when it did neither.

When God is silent in response to our deepest and most desperate prayers--saying neither yes with a miracle nor no with a clear sign that would at least let us know He had heard us--it is natural to conclude that God doesn't care. But a little while later, Digory dares to ask Aslan for help again:

He thought of his Mother, and he thought of the great hopes he had, and how they were all dying away, and a lump came in his throat and tears in his eyes, and he blurted out:  "But please, please won't you--can't you give me something that will cure Mother?" Up till then he had been looking at the Lion's great feet and the huge claws on them; now, in despair, he looked up at its face. What he saw surprised him as much as anything in his whole life.

For the tawny face was bent down near his own and great shining tears stood in the Lion's eyes. They were such big, bright tears compared with Digory's own that for a moment he felt as if the Lion must really be sorrier about his Mother than he was himself.

Digory's prayer remained unanswered, but everything had changed. Now, he knew that the great Lion--in whom all his hopes were resting--truly cared.

*Like Digory, C.S. Lewis at the age of 10 watched his mother suffer with cancer. At one point she recovered (as if by magic) in answer to his childish prayers only to die two months later.

Engaging the Silence by Pete Greig

first
there is
  prayer
and where there is prayer
there may be
  miracles
but where miracles may not be
there are
  questions
and where there are questions
there may be
  silence
but silence may be
more than
  absence
silence
may be presence
  muted
silence
may not be nothing but
  something
to explore
defy accuse
  engage 
and
this is
  prayer
and where there is prayer
there may yet be
  miracles...

new photos.

One of our close friends (Bethany) sent me these photos today that she had taken in January while visiting us in the the NICU at South Bend. I had never seen these photos, and though they brought lots of tears, I am so grateful to have more beautiful pictures of Olive.

I was chatting with another dear friend of mine from Seattle and she said something that meant so much to me...probably more than she realized. She said, "I would never wish the pain on you, and still wish there was something i could do to take it away...but you have come into you. You were always there... but Olive made you glow."

I carry you with me into the world,
into the smell of rain
and the words that dance between people;
and for me, it will always be this way,
walking in the light,
remembering being alive together.

-Brian Andreas