Was reading "The Life of Pi". It's by no means a "Christian" book. It's more a book about our search and desire for God to be a part of our existance. There were passages i found myself marking off with little bright sticky notes as i went through. This one keeps surfacing:
I'll be honest about it. It is not atheists who get stuck in my craw, but agnostics. Doubt is useful for a while. We must all pass through the garden of Gethsemane. If Christ played with doubt, so must we. If Christ spent an anguished night in prayer, if He burst out from the Cross, "My God, my God, why have you forsaken me?" then surely we are also permitted doubt. But we must move on. To choose doubt as a philosophy of life is akin to choosing immobility as a means of transportation."
It seems that in life every now and then, whether it is by doubt, despair, or confusion, I'm brought to a standstill. When Sadie got sick it was like God stopped speaking mid-sentence and I was waiting for Him to finish what He was planning to say. The days went on with unanswered questions, accusations, lack of sleep, and an abundance of worry and fear. Still, He remained silent. His last syllable still ringing a suspended chord in my head. I know this was my reaction when Darren was diagnosed with Epilepsy too. I was waiting for God to heal Darren, to speak to me, to somehow make sense out of it. I always knew in my head that God's love for us doesn't translate into peace and freedom from suffering, but even so, I realized that I had rediculously thought of myself as somehow one of "God's pets". That my life was going to be easy. Having something *horrible* unexpectedly explode into the life of my child caused me physical pain. I found that I lived with my muscles tight, my hands gripping white to the steering wheel as i drove, my shoulders pulled in tight, ready to be bombarded with more shocking pain. I felt like if God was going to finish that sentence... it was probably going to be bad news as our relationship had obviously somehow "changed"....I was wrong. God is not an evil ogre watching us from the clouds with his finger hovering over the "smite" button (as the famous Far Side cartoon suggests) any more than He is a magical Genie granting us our every whim and desire. He *does* however, desire relationship with us on a deeper level than faulty notions of "God's pets" or of being "forgotten" by God. I'm setting my mind lately on *abiding* in truth alone. May my God sing His truth and love over each and every doubt and sorrow and help me to *really* know Him for who He is and not what I have imagined Him to be.
James 1 ("The Message" paraphrase of the Bible)
2-4Consider it a sheer gift, friends, when tests and challenges come at you from all sides. You know that under pressure, your faith-life is forced into the open and shows its true colors. So don't try to get out of anything prematurely. Let it do its work so you become mature and well-developed, not deficient in any way.
5-8If you don't know what you're doing, pray to the Father. He loves to help. You'll get his help, and won't be condescended to when you ask for it. Ask boldly, believingly, without a second thought. People who "worry their prayers" are like wind-whipped waves. Don't think you're going to get anything from the Master that way, adrift at sea, keeping all your options open.
9-11When down-and-outers get a break, cheer! And when the arrogant rich are brought down to size, cheer! Prosperity is as short-lived as a wildflower, so don't ever count on it. You know that as soon as the sun rises, pouring down its scorching heat, the flower withers. Its petals wilt and, before you know it, that beautiful face is a barren stem. Well, that's a picture of the "prosperous life." At the very moment everyone is looking on in admiration, it fades away to nothing.
12Anyone who meets a testing challenge head-on and manages to stick it out is mighty fortunate. For such persons loyally in love with God, the reward is life and more life.
13-15Don't let anyone under pressure to give in to evil say, "God is trying to trip me up." God is impervious to evil, and puts evil in no one's way. The temptation to give in to evil comes from us and only us. We have no one to blame but the leering, seducing flare-up of our own lust. Lust gets pregnant, and has a baby: sin! Sin grows up to adulthood, and becomes a real killer.
16-18So, my very dear friends, don't get thrown off course. Every desirable and beneficial gift comes out of heaven. The gifts are rivers of light cascading down from the Father of Light. There is nothing deceitful in God, nothing two-faced, nothing fickle. He brought us to life using the true Word, showing us off as the crown of all his creatures.
Here are the latest pictures of the playhouse. Curt helped me to lift the trusses into place last night, level them and screw them in.
I'm starting to get excited. There are a couple things I'm going to adjust in my framing (the window which is not level and maybe the door opening) before i go on to roofing and siding it. Along the same kind of "do it yourself" thinking, my daughter Robin decided yesterday that she was going to start making clothes for her bear and dolls. She asked to dig into the scrap material I've used for quilting and started fooling around. All she had was cloth, scissors and yarn but this morning as we were getting ready to head into the dentist, Sadie and Ellie came down the stairs with full shirts that Robin had fashioned for them out of the scrap material. They begged to wear them to town (and Robin was beaming from ear to ear) so... i let them. :D They got a double take from the receptionist at the dentist but so what. So cute and fun when they decide to take something on like that and find a way to do it in their own way without help. She cut a hole in the material for the head, holes along the edges and then tied the edges together with yarn. Reminded me a bit of my attempts to figure out how to make this playhouse. (Sadie did wear pants with her "new shirt". :) 
