A friend read to our small gathering one of this week's passages from Oswald Chambers' My Utmost for His Highest which struck me as unusual and worth meditating upon. My favorite axiom from the passage follows, "nor is shallowness an indication that there is no depth to your life at all— the ocean has a shore." (Chambers) Perhaps one might substitute carnal or temporal for shallow and understand Chambers more clearly. Of prime importance is the sense of self import we carry when we deal with the profound things of life. How often have others witnessed seriously profound Christians and been turned away? Would Christianity not appeal more if believers exhibited more of the joy and levity which are also blessings from God? Chambers also hints at how God draws near to us amidst a profundity humans cannot fully comprehend. Were I to flippantly share the intimate moments I sometimes experience in His presence, would this not somehow lessen the special-ness of those moments? God alone can take our deepest parts, understand them, and make sense of them in a way that we ourselves can comprehend and, in so doing, reveal more of Himself to us and within us.
Today's Rare Disease Day. There's sometimes a particular weightiness to life with a rare disease. All the appointments, emergencies, traumas, doctors, therapists, medicines, opinions, schedules and upset schedules. My touchpoint is being mom to my precious girl with Wiedemann-Steiner Syndrome (WSS). You'd have to spend a day or week shadowing me to know what it's really like. Doesn't that sound alienating? As though you couldn't possibly imagine if you're not living it? Well, maybe. But think about a time of immense grief you've lived through, or a time when your world seemed to be falling apart around you and it felt like everyone else was completely unaffected. I suppose it's a bit like that. You might have thought that those around you couldn't possibly know how that experience felt to you. A couple weeks ago, I started keeping a list of all the extraordinary things that happened in my life due to my daughter's rare disease. I learned a c...
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