the intersection of life and grace

Please know that while I’ve been pretty quiet here, your prayers are felt and my heart is grateful.

Our pastor called our church to extra prayer for Tim in yesterday’s services and relayed our request to talk to the mom and dad, not the self-conscious and unhappily suffering teenager, if they have inquiries to make or some sort of help to offer.

We asked our church, via the email prayer request list, to pray for a breakthrough for Tim. Two of our favorite and powerful intercessors added this to our request today: Our God is a God of Breakthroughs. God rescued David (2 Samuel 5:20) and he named the place Baal-perzim meaning “The Lord of breaking through” (baal literally means lord.) “Pray for My intervention.” was a word we got for this.

So much intervention needed – in his body to find and heal the cause of the tremors and spasms, to get to the right doctors for consultation and an accurate diagnosis and treatment, to get the right plan for his present/future high school education… and God knows all of it so perfectly and completely that even my list from the midst of it is a distraction. Don’t be distracted by my ramblings, do pray as the Lord leads. If you have some word of encouragement or knowledge, please post it? We do believe that God speaks to us through his Word and through his Body.

Pray also for Calley, another teenager with symptoms very, very similar to Tim’s, who lives about an hour away from us. Her mother, Penny, and I are in communication with each other and the same doctors have been either helpful (or not helpful at all) to both of our kiddos.

Is to quote from an email I sent this morning to some dear friends.

Please continue to pray for Tim. Getting a firm diagnosis that more than one doctor can agree upon has been impossible. He’s been out of school for several weeks now, is supposed to be going back the week after next, but we’ve seen no significant, lasting improvement in the tremors and spasms even through several courses of steroids (provide temporary decrease). He has been infection free for a little while, however, so that part of our reasoning for taking him out of school on a medical note (with home tutoring) has at least proven correct. Our pediatrician has been diligent in seeking consults, but they take a long time to schedule and one seems like it will never happen. I’m tired of the physical nightmare Tim’s going through, and he’s beyond that as his body simply refuses relief from any medical or prayerful remedy. We’ve an appointment with our pediatrician and another mother and teenager (Penny and Calley) with eerily similar symptoms (but nothing else in common with Tim, which is baffling) to see about pursuing a consult at the Mayo Clinic’s pediatric diagnostic unit. None of this happens quickly.

I’m also flailing around trying to keep up, but not really managing to effectively, with my year-old “new” job that I feel as though I haven’t started to do much at all. Maintenance mode is not my style or calling, and I’m finding myself to be wholly unreliable at even that. I tried to resign, twice now actually, but they aren’t having it. Yet, they’re needing me to be more present there and more reliable there. I’m also having struggles physically myself, numbness/tingling in my hands and elsewhere along my spine with certain movements (like looking down)… could be carpal tunnel (in both hands, starting at the same time?) or something else. Initially set on shortly after my return from the NYWC in November, went to the doc pretty quickly, he did tests which discovered my pernicious anemia (which can cause tingling), began treating it which alleviated some of the tingling, but 6 months later what remains needs to be evaluated by a neurologist. Waiting to hear when the appt is scheduled and praying it will “fit” into the need to have someone
with Tim all the time (he’s been falling alot).

Cathie is needy, in that she’s 15 and struggling through all that brings, plus having home be chaotic and plans be haphazard by necessity. Tom is coping by running a lot, working a lot, and keeping his routine as normal as he can possibly manage. He just had a nickel-sized suspected basal cell lesion removed from his left temple, he gets the 2 inch row of stitches removed and the cytology results this afternoon. Of course, we already know that it’s cancerous – the doctor said its appearance and characteristics left little margin for doubt. I have no idea what that means for us, the removal could be the end of it, or it may be a serial thing, or it could have spread (because he tried to ignore a wound that wouldn’t heal on the side of his head for a VERY long time before finally giving in to my plea to address it with his doctor). Basal cell is something, as I understand it, that rarely spreads, but can. So, we shall see.

That’s about all I can say at this point. Need to do some work while Tim’s still sleeping.

Love you all..
Patti

The New York Times has featured an article today entitled A Call for Manners in the World of Nasty Blogs in which writer Brad Stone begins by asking, “Is it too late to bring civility to the web?”

The conversational free-for-all on the Internet known as the blogosphere can be a prickly and unpleasant place. Now, a few high-profile figures in high-tech are proposing a blogger code of conduct to clean up the quality of online discourse.

Last week, Tim O’Reilly, a conference promoter and book publisher who is credited with coining the term Web 2.0, began working with Jimmy Wales, creator of the communal online encyclopedia Wikipedia, to create a set of guidelines to shape online discussion and debate.

It seems O’Reilly’s guidelines would establish categories and a blogger could choose the set of standards by which to abide and signfy same by displaying a particular logo.

You can read it all here. I found it an interesting idea in a grass-roots, democracy and self-rule sort of way.

The beauty of grace is that it makes life not fair.
- Matthew Theissen, “Be my Escape“

Tim shared this bit of lyrical insight with me as we sat in Red Robin. We were grabbing a bite of dinner on our way home from yet another visit to the doctor to diagnose yet another troubling infection for Tim; he needed to eat to take the first dose of the newest antibiotic.

Three weeks into his pseudo-confinement at home to protect him from the myriad bugs that go with all the contact at school, he has another infection. He knew it, I knew it, the doc barely looked at his throat before she was calculating which drug to try next reletive to those we’ve already used and his allergies. He sat near tears of frustration as we waited for the requisite strep test to finish – it was negative this time.

He’s discouraged that he’s sick again. He’s tired of being sick, he’s tired of being isolated. It’s been a year since he’s felt well, so I can’t blame him at all.

It’s a moment of grace to me to think that after all the frustration today held for him, it’s that bit of lyrical wisdom that’s floating through his mind.

The story resulting from Marc Parry’s visit to Christ Church yesterday can be found right here.

Our Palm Sunday gathering before the procession also made the front page of the TU with a large color photograph placed near a smaller one from the Roman Catholic church down the hill. The photos weren’t online this morning, but may appear in one of their galleries later.

Update: Here’s the photo.

Rev. N. Bradley Jones leads Palm Sunday observances at Christ Church in Schenectady. (Philip Kamrass / Times Union)

Since Marc Parry, a reporter for the Times Union who has written some highly unfavorable stories about the Diocese in the past, along with a photographer came to our church this morning, it appears another story is on the way. He arrived before Sunday school began and stayed through much of the service, including the procession of the Palms and the Passion narrative play. He took a number of people aside, though I’m not certain how many had much to say to him on the matter of our former bishop and previous pastor’s conversion to the Roman Catholic Church.

I guess to find that out, we’ll have to stay tuned. I pray that the Truth he heard during the worship service, and the very source of the love we all have for the Herzogs, would take root in his heart.