3-month-iversary

The images of Atlantic City and LBI today are heart-breaking... We're sending prayers and best wishes for a speedy recovery to all of those affected by Hurricane Sandy yesterday. It's funny -- I hadn't been to Atlantic City in over a decade prior to John's accident, but in the 2 weeks he was in the hospital there, the city really grew on me. There's something quite visceral about seeing the boardwalk tossed around like so many matchsticks, seeing LBI underwater...

It seems small consolation, but when I look at him moving around our house today, his mobility is beyond anything I dared to dream of in those early August days. And here we are, just three months later. So here's my most sicnere wish that three months from now, the nightmare of the hurricane will be receding as well.

Of all of the blessings we've had these past few months, John's life and returning strength is claerly the greatest. But beyond that, it's hard to rank them and say, "This one is the next greatest." One of these blessings has been the opportunity for reflection, and in that spirit, I'd like to share something I read this morning:

Strangely, that admission of weakness opens the door to a new kind of strength. To acknowledge and accept weakness is to ground our lives more firmly in truth, and it turns out that to be grounded in reality is to become more able and more alive. Denial is hard work; those who try to stifle their awareness of the limits of human life and ambition in the busy rounds of daily life never reach their full potential.
To open your eyes to the fragility of life and to our dependence on that which is infinitely greater than ourselves is to enter more deeply into life. To come to terms with the radical insecurity in which we all live is to find a different and more reliable kind of security. The joys and occupations of ordinary life aren’t all there is to existence, but neither are the great and all-destroying storms. There is a calm beyond the storm, and the same force that sends these storms into our lives offers a peace and security that no storm can destroy. As another one of the psalms puts it, “Weeping may endure for a night, but joy cometh in the morning.” Accepting your limits and your dependence on things you can’t control is the first step on the road toward finding that joy.

 This is from a blog at The American Interest (posting here: http://blogs.the-american-interest.com/wrm/2012/10/29/nature-and-natures-god/). Wishing you this peace and joy...