Devastated or Viva la Vida

Don't skip this one daughter (but read today's - 10/12/12 post, on the Lettre s, first)  .....

Back in 2008, I posted a music video by a group I had never heard of, of a song that captured something important, but I did not know what it was - until last night.

At the time, in 2008, I was struggling mightily with health issues and a manager from hell, and I posted this video so that my friends could see where I was.  By the end of the next day, the entire gang had come to my rescue - it was one of the most humbling experiences in my life.  Someone did actually care, actually, many someones. So, my friends, DO NOT come this time, be in prayer instead for daughter.  (But, if you do show up on Saturday evening, it is Mexican cook off night with the Swedish Rocket Scientist doing the meat!)

And so, I give you Coldplay, Viva La Vida:



So, for me, this has been one of the most harrowing weeks in many decades.  Visions and knowledge poured over me like never before, from Sunday's "I am going to cut her loose" culminating in last nights vision "tying it altogether" - defining determinative and permissive wills in her life.  Make no mistake, I am devastated for my daughter.  I even tried to offer my life if it would spare hers, bring on the big one God - I will take the pain, if it would protect her from herself.  Alas, my God does not work that way - and you have no idea how desperately I wish He did.

As with all of mankind, we struggle against God, His Will and His path in our life.  It is the rare person it seems that can be willful enough to follow without struggle - certainly I am not one of them!  And I am sure that those whom I look up to, as not being like me, probably look up to others wishing they were more like them.  It is the curse of our natures.

And now for the second time in my life I am to witness this happening to someone I love.  All week I have been reminded of DL and the cost her rebellion brought her.  I know I have never shared more that what she did and how God smacked her for it.  But, it was humbling 28 years later for God to tell me that she had repented and how at long last she now understood.  Twenty-eight years later!  The Dutchman, when asked by me, tracked her down to confirm this - because I TEST all spirits. And no, I really have not sought her out, even when I heard she lives less than 3 miles from me now, being in the care of the UW Medical staff.  It did not help in the following years for her father to send me messages through Dutchman, I would have far preferred to have actually seen him!  I loved that man.  Nor, her mother running into me constantly it seems that first year I had my four adopted Russian kids.  And again the memory of "them", the couple whose son died that first year of my pastorate, their son, never forgotten, never ceased to be mourned.  And though they were behind my firing, 25 years later they stood in front of me and apologized.  All of these stories are elsewhere on this site.  All of this pain dredged up across this week, driving home the helplessness of man.

So, prayers for my daughter please. 

Prayers for Nadine Petrich, whose husband is not expected to make it to the weekend.  Nadine and Ray were the first couple I knew in this church.  Ray has been one of the few men I have ever respected.  A man of God whom was free to discuss his life and his lessons.  For those whom remember Kennedy sending in the advisers in 1962 to Vietnam, which culminated in the war, he was one of those.  He came to the Cross because of it, losing his wife in the process (Adventist).  His second wife, also a Christian, is awesome.  It will be a sad weekend.