Day 157 - November 18 - With a nod of the head

Last evening, I was washing up after dinner while Cherié and Connor sat in the living room with Joélle. Suddenly, I heard what can best be described as a loud exclamation of alarm from my wife. Concerned, I dropped the dish towel and went careening around the corner, scurrying to find out what had gone wrong.

I was met with an excited flurry of words from Cherié, which took me a second to decipher. It turned out to not have been an exclamation of alarm after all, but rather more of a shout of excitement (more of an "ooh" than an "ahh", for you Monty Python fans). Cherié, sitting 8-10 feet from Connor and slightly out of his line of sight, had looked up at him just as he turned his head toward his left hand. While she watched, he looked at his hand, his left thumb visibly moved almost an inch, and Connor nodded to himself, as if he were satisfied that he had done what he determined to do.

It was an exciting moment for Cherié, and only slightly less so for me (I did miss seeing it, after all). We talked a bit about it after that, and Cherié hasn't been this confident in five months. She is encouraged by the fact that this affliction really is only temporary.

One of the things I deal with on a regular basis through this season in our life is the fact that much of what I am trying to unlearn, I believed to be my basic personality for most of my life. For example, if you were to ask me, I'd tell you that I'm a "glass half empty" person, and I seem to be able to find the grey cloud under every silver lining. Eeyore, if you will! I'm learning that this isn't, in fact, my basic personality; but rather it has much to do with how I choose to live/see/act - so that makes it doubly difficult because my subconscious keeps telling me I'm trying to change something I can't change. In a sense, that's true - I can't change it. What I'm really trying to do is to let God change me instead. Much harder, IMO (at least at this particular point in my life!). And that reminds me of the lyrics of a song from the OC Supertones - "I'm sorry about who I am, I'm not who I'm trying to be. For some reason my bad attitude comes so easily."

Oh, wretched man that I am (in the immortal words of Paul the Apostle)! Who can rescue me from this body of death?

So I praise God that He can work such good out of such a situation.

Tonight our kids are kicking Cherié and I out of the house for an hour or two so we can go have dinner alone. That's a blessing - although I see her every day, I haven't seen my wife in quite a while. It'll be good for us. Please continue to pray for our family - we need the Lord's intervention badly to stay in one accord through this. Pray that Connor's movements would be magnified and spread across his body, that he would begin to regain the feeling that goes with it, and that he would be able to submit his attitude and pride to the Lord. Please also pray for me, that I would be effective at leading this family spiritually. I want so badly to help Connor through this, but so often seem to be unable to do so.

Eric

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