"Blocking & Tackling"

Today's blog is from a guest blogger ... Darby & Parson's Daddy.

Hi everyone, wow I just don’t know what to say or do to thank everyone for prayer, support, financial gifts, offers to help with Darby etc…. Though no one has stepped up to feed the chickens. Oh well. Jenn has been down with Parson at Texas Children’s and I have been with her most of the time though I have been back these last two days to work. I’ll go back tomorrow and take Darby with me for a few days to visit baby sister. Hard to give an update really, a lot of times we don’t have any good news but don’t have bad news to report either. She is under sedation right now and ventilator is breathing for her but they wake her a little and lower the settings occasionally to let her breathe on her own. So far she is responding well to that, she’s strong like her mom.

I could probably hold 3 months worth of Sunday School lessons on what this has done for us emotionally and spiritually. I’m not a control freak but I’ve always lived the safe, comfortable life of a healthy middle class white guy. Very predictable, very boring. But I’m a different kind of Christian than I was a year ago. In fact I realize just how prideful I am. It’s just too easy to pick out the sins of sex, drugs, and rock-n-roll -- petty sins that I really don’t think God obsesses about like we do, when I really think the issue is self. Dealing with personal tragedy or illness, especially with a child, sends you through a myopic kind of fog. My struggle, my child, my stress, me me me, blah blah blah. I’m tired of that. I’m tired of being that kind of neurotic, self possessed Christian. That’s not very attractive to non believers. If nothing else I’ve learned that it’s not about me. It’s not about Parson. It’s about them. It’s about you, and us. God created us to live within a community environment and wants us to struggle and fight and laugh and dance within that environment. It’s about a Great God who allows us in our smallness to call him Father. To tell him that life isn’t fair but we’re going to trust him anyway.

So Jenn and I have discovered a peace not found in the common areas of life. We have experienced an unusual amount of peace, contentment, strength and its 100% from all the prayers from you. We can stand over the bed of our hospitalized infant and smile and share a joke, a tear.

But all of that aside, what is not lost on us is that you are all dealing with junk too. Some of you are dealing with illnesses of your own or loved ones who are down. There’s the daily struggle of “raising a child in the way that he should go” and some of you have work stresses, financial burdens, relationship struggles, hospitalized grandchildren and even others that are planning a joyful move into a new home. So I know that when you have given to us, or offered help or prayed or anything, I know that you hurt too. You are plowing through “stuff” or as my sunday school teacher Colin always calls it, the "blocking and tackling" of every day life.

From our hearts, thank you for shouldering some of this with us and going to the great throne on our behalf. I know for a fact that He listens, and that’s enough for me.

Rodney


(Attached pic is of Dr. Mallory and Parson)