Reuben's seizures continue to continue steadily every day. It's been almost a week since he's had one during the daytime hours, but they keep coming regularly during the night, and he's been doing some odd eye rolling while awake this week that all of us who keep an eye on him are undecided if it's a matter of sensory stimming, possibly as a means of staying awake as he's terribly fatigued, or if they're sub-clinical partial seizures. Who knows. Certainly not any of us.
As I was upstairs with him during one of his seizures a week or two ago, I was flooded with remembrance of how strongly we understood the meaning of his name (Reuben Matthew = behold a son, a gift from God) in the weeks after his initial epilepsy diagnosis almost seven years ago. A child who can strip you of your own strength and teach you to lean more fully on God is a beautiful gift. Anything that turns us toward our Savior and drives us to trust only in him and long only for him is a good thing. As I talked Reuben through that seizure, I was telling him again to hold onto Jesus, and look ahead to the goodness God has in store for him someday when this damaged human flesh is finally gone and he is living in the completeness and newness of heaven, of the day when he will be able to sing, forever, with his very own voice the praises of his King.
Those moments make me yearn for that blessed time when there will be nothing to come between me and my God - every tear wiped away; disappointment, pain, suffering all gone. Just to be able to be there, face to face with my Savior as everything else falls away and pales in comparison.
Being the mother to Reuben and Tsvetomira daily drives home the beauty of yearning for heaven, and of fixing our eyes on Christ. These two children have difficult roads ahead of them in this life (and already behind them, too!) with no real hope of reprieve, yet have the gift of being able to enter eternity with so much fewer of the regrets that you and I will have.
My other children, on the other hand, have a tendency to keep me tied to this world.
I wonder and dream, what will this young man become? Will Owen ever change his mind about the fact that there are (and I quote), "...three things I will never like: broccoli, cheese, and girls." I, personally, think broccoli is pretty tasty. We shall see. 😊
Will delightful, smiley, always happy-even-when-she-says-no Gloria girl keep that disposition? Will she learn to speak fluent Bulgarian?? And that slightly-older sister of hers. Oh my. What fun (and what a challenge!) to watch this little flower unfold! I have NO CLUE what the future will hold for Evania, and wow does she make me curious to find out.
And this dear daughter - what a privilege to play a role in helping her grow up into a woman! Although dreaming about the future is still very hard for her, her Daddy and I see so much beautiful potential, and similar to 'Vania, we are both very curious to see what happens when our Bobbi is ready to spread her wings.
How about Leah: is she really destined to become the mother of fourteen children? Her plan is to have one more than Adam...however many that ends up being.
Will this young man expand his vocabulary? How much bigger and stronger will he get? He's come so far already. What a wonder it is to see him slowly, but continually mature and develop and become a caring young man! (Nice hair, Krassi!)
And will our Rinnah maintain her desire to "have a little girl just like Mira to take care of someday"? Only time will tell.
Time, yes. Time spent living in this world and watching what's happening in this world, and hoping and dreaming about the things on this side of eternity.
Matt and I are reading through a book together. Slowly. V E R Y slowly. We used to do this in the olden days when we only had three or four children, and called it our "date night." I would work on my sewing (in the days before we had nine children I generated about half of our annual income through a custom home decor sewing business that I ran from home) and he would read out loud a chapter or two of whatever book we were reading.
This time around we're reading The Hidden Smile of God: the Fruit of Affliction in the Lives of John Bunyan, William Cowper, and David Brainerd. This statement from the book really jumped out at me:
"While in prison [Bunyan] confessed concerning his wife and children, 'I am somewhat too fond of these great Mercies.' Thus we must learn to 'live upon God that is invisible,' not only because God is superior to sinful pleasures, but also because he is superior to sacred ones as well. Everything else in the world we must count as dead to us and we to it."That statement captures what welled over me that night with Reuben as I held him through his seizure. There is great beauty in these blessings in our life that make it easier to separate ourselves from not only the sinful pleasures of this life, but the sacred ones, too.
On Sunday we sang:
All the treasures of this world
Will never satisfy
You alone are endless joy
So, I cling to Christ*
Nothing, absolutely nothing in this world can truly promise us endless joy. Only Christ. So let's fix our eyes on him, fill our hope with him, seek after him, and keep him at the forefront of everything we do while we are still living with our feet muddied in this life.
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