PRAY

caroline is my new sister in law - she married chris' brother two weekends ago!! (pictures to come - i promise!) last night, caroline's sister found her 3 year old son at the bottom of their pool. his heart had stopped, but the paramedics were able to get a heartbeat back. as of this morning, he's stable in the icu. THANK YOU GOD FOR ANSWERING OUR PRAYERS WITH A BIG YES!!! (i tossed and turned and had horrible dreams last night because until this morning, we thought he had died...)

he's in an induced coma, and they're going to do an mri today to assess the damage done from lack of oxygen. please pray. pray for our papa God to supply little andrew all he needs to recover from this scary situation. as one of my friends said, "our God could have provided oxygen to that little boy's brain no matter how long he was under. He IS faithful!" please pray for elena (caro's sister) to have peace unspeakable, for her to turn to the giver of life and all good things, for her and the whole family to have increased faith. God works in mysterious (sometimes scary and infuriating) ways, but He is sovereign. i know He is. He has GOOD plans for all of us. i know He does!! please pray that their family will know He is too!! even during earthly tragedy!

***UPDATE***
as of 3/28, andrew is stable and his mri and eeg have returned positive results! ALL PRAISE TO GOD WHO REIGNS ON HIGH. He has answered our prayers! may He get all the glory and thanks!!

from andrew's mom:

For those of you who have heard my youngest son, Andrew, had a tragic
accident on Wednesday. He nearly drowned in our pool. I pulled him
out and with the help of our neighbor, a neonatal nurse, performed CPR. He
was lifelited to a children’s hospital here in Atlanta. It has been the
longest 32 hours of my life ever. This is the most horrific, tragic and
sad event that I or my family have ever been through. Right now I pray for
my little boy, his Daddy and my other two children. I will continue to
pray for them and the other families out there that have gone through this as
well as for the other families out there that I hope never go through
this.

Thank you to all of you who have prayed with us, THE LORD IS SO
GREAT! We knew that whatever road we were faced with, it would be the one
that God had chosen for us. He has a divine plan that we all play into and
I am eager to know what I can do next to serve him. I pray and look
forward to watching my son get better and also serve our Lord in whatever way he
is asked.

We don’t know a a whole lot right now, but this is what we do know.
He heart rate is stable. His breathing is controlled by a ventilator until
he can begin to breathe on his own. He had an MRI done that revealed no
damage to his brain! Praise GOD! Again, thank you for your prayers-
He hears us! We are waiting for him to regain consciousness from the drug
induced coma. If that does not occur tonight, he will be re-sedated and we
will try again tomorrow. It is vital at this time that I give all of my
attention and strength to my little one. I appreciate all of your thoughts
and concerns but please bear with us and give our family some space to get
through this difficult time. It is so encouraging to hear kind thoughts
and prayers, but we just don’t have the time to respond to everyone.
Please know that we thank you and appreciate your efforts and when the time is
right we will communicate to everyone. At this time my Best friend Bre
Anne is aware of everything that is going on and is updated almost immediatly
after I am. Please do not hesitate to email her (no. 1 on my friends list)
or call her for those of you that have her number. She will make sure that
everyone is kept informed.

Please leave me emails or comments as it helps to boost my spirits. I love to hear from everyone sharing their love and support for my little man Andrew!

Thank you again from the depths of my heart. He has benefited from
your strength, faith and prayers.

On the Edge of the Dark Sea of Darkness BLOG REVIEW

andrew peterson recruited some people with blogs to read and review his new book, and i was picked as one of them! if you know me and my almost obsession with AP's music, forget all about that, and read this with new eyes. and then go order and read the book! you're gonna love it!

Have you ever anticipated that something you were about to experience was going to be excellent, just to have it turn around and exceed those expectations? It happened to me when I visited Disney World for the first time a little over a year and a half ago (i.e., the exhaustive technical expertise, superior customer service, and almost overwhelming attention to detail). When I first sat down to read Andrew Peterson’s latest creation, Book One of "The Wingfeather Saga", On the Edge of the Dark Sea of Darkness, I knew I would like it. I suspected I might even love it. But I’m ashamed to say that I was not expecting it to be as excellent as it was. It definitely exceeded my expectations.

It’s hard to find words to explain Andrew’s novel. The subtitle says it’s an adventure filled with peril. Other reviewers have labeled it as "fun to read" and "wildly imaginative". These are all accurate depictions of what you will experience, and I would add that it is an absolutely brilliant story. It has so much engrossing creativity that I kept having to remind myself that the lands of Skree and Aerwiar were just storybook lands; that Fangs of Dang weren’t waiting in the center of town to arrest me; that Gnag the Nameless didn’t have a desire to hunt me down and finish me off. Through the pages of this excellent work, I found myself laughing out loud, wiping tears off of my cheeks, and actually throwing the book across the room when I reached the climax in the plot! Andrew’s writing style creates within you an emotional bond with the characters and makes you totally lose yourself in their world.

I was gripped from the very beginning. And not just from the clever and delightful introductions on the lands of Aerwiar and Skree and the Igiby cottage, where you learn of a Nameless Evil (named Gnag) that rules the Fangs of Dang, who suppress the Skreeans, including the Igiby family, who live a free life, "as long as they were in their homes by midnight."

In the very first chapter, I trembled right alongside Janner Igiby as he "lay trembling in his bed with his eyes shut tight" at the sound of the passing Black Carriage sent by Gnag the Nameless. His fears were heightened knowing that his brother and sister, Tink and Leeli, were asleep, leaving him alone in the dark. The thoughts that went through his mind, his imagination running utterly away from him, was very reminiscent of my thoughts as a young girl laying wide-eyed in my bed, wondering and shivering at every sound I heard. And as soon as my parents’ light, visible from the crack under my door, went out, my fears multiplied knowing I was the only one left awake in the house. But I never faced anything as perilous as the thought of being carried away by the Black Carriage and its shadowy driver, never to be seen again. But as the carriage passed by his window and continued down the street, Janner found comfort in the wagging tail of his little sister’s dog, Nugget, knowing that even just the dog was awake with him – a simple comfort that sent him quickly to sleep.

Andrew Peterson has long been my favorite songwriter. In fact, some have labeled him as one of the greatest songwriters of our time. His lyrics are captivating, encouraging, and sometimes even life-changing. (I first noticed Andrew’s music when a line from The Chasing Song caught my ear: "Well I realize that falling down ain’t graceful, but I thank the Lord that falling’s full of grace." I still cling to that prayer, even eight years later.) While On the Edge of the Dark Sea of Darkness might not change your life, there are definitely lessons to take away from it. I won’t spoil things by telling you what you’ll walk away with. You’ll just have to read the book and add it to your favorites list. I certainly have.

You can order the book here for only $11.19!

latest toy

from this (times 4 or 5):

to this:




every time chris and i get in the car to go anywhere more than 20 minutes away, we drag with us one giant cd case, 3 regular sized cd cases, 1 small cd case and at least 2 giant rolls (the kind that blank cds come on) of cds. LITERALLY. chris has a small-capacity (6GB?) zen micro that he took to england that officially died (literally blew up) the other day. and it never helped us cut down on the amount of cds we carried around anyway.

today, we did it. we bought an 80GB ipod. *sigh* i'm so torn about it. while it's convenient to not have to lug around ALL those cds, we just dropped a lot of dough in the hands of a local electronic store. enough money to feed, support and care for a compassion international child for well over a year. all for what? convenience and entertainment. as a coworker who is also a fellow believer just said "they make good idols!"

*sigh* he's right. and yet this machine still sits and charges beside me on my desk. what do we do? be in the world but not of the world! does that mean supporting the economy and spending the money that we earn? does it mean giving away every single extra penny to charity and the poor? does it mean living in the tension somewhere in between?

although i will say that it will be nice to ride approximately 16 hours in the car NOT sharing my feet-space with a million cds, and NOT using my precious and limited finger and arm strength sifting through said million cds (it's amazing how quickly that wears me out...).

yep.

spring break baby

enough said.

all sorts of stuffs

i know you're just dying to know - the results of my mri were clear. there was something about a slight somethingerother being visible, but that it shouldn't have any effect on anything. so i went to the doctor and he said i could stop taking meds. and he said "call us if you need us". so now all that's entering my body other than food and water is a multivitamin, and it feels GREAT!! i mean, i wasn't really all that drugged up, but i still hated taking medicine. of course, today everything hurts - including my teeth. so maybe i DO need some lyrica afterall....hmm......

in other news, it was confirmed to us last night that our apartment-mate did, indeed, commit suicide. dangit! and coincidentally, the friend who encouraged us in small group emailed us today with some words from her dad when she talked to him about our story. he said i could post them, and instead of picking and choosing what to post, i'm just going to post the whole thing. i hope it encourages you like it did us:

This scenario is always used by Baptists to strike fear and guilt into people so
that they use every opportunity possible to present the Gospel and get people
into the life-boat . I'm sure it is very difficult to process when
it is more than just a discussion. Do you remember this speech?

1. It is not your fault.
2. It is your fault.

You have to keep both of these truths if you are going to get through this Biblically.

It is not your fault.

Every person has a journey. This is easy to prove Biblically. Take any character of scripture and see how their life was woven together by God. A person does not die before his time nor can days be added to his life. These are easy texts to find. Therefore, once one accepts the sovereignty of God over life and death, it is possible to put a death, and untimely as it might seem to us, in his providence. Nor does one know what happened in that person's heart and mind even seconds before his death. To assume that a person was not saved because of our inaction is the pathway to self-sabotage. We will never be able to bear the burden that only God can bear. Share in his sorrow over the lost, perhaps, but we do not save nor can we prevent him from saving – yes, even without us. And a person is condemned not because of the hesitation of Christ's ambassadors, but because of his own sin. Therefore, one may rest in the loving-kindness of God, and trust that He is able to do even when we are not willing. It is not your fault. In fact, living in a world-view that says, "It is my fault." is to rob oneself of any hope of being an ambassador of the true gospel for it undermines the only truth that saves which is, "Only God can save."

It is your fault.

The above argument is only the first step toward a healthy world view. If one is not moved to compassion for the lost, if one cannot stop for the helpless, nor care for the unloved, then he/she has not understood the gospel. I would never stand in the way of someone feeling remorse for sins of omission. By sins of omission we mean all those things which by the positive understanding of the moral law we ought to do but do not. It is in fact these sins that turn our volumes of sin into the library of congress
of sin. When we fail to love, we fail the gospel because love is the final apologetic. It should hurt. It should make us repent. But most importantly it should drive us, in all our inadequacy, back to the adequacy of Christ. I think that it is fair to say that if a remorse over a sin of omission causes us to retreat into self absorption and regret, that it is not a repentance unto life. I believe it is of the devil. The devil would have us believe that because we failed, we are failures and not loved by God. In this way we embrace a sorrow that leads to death. The truth is that we are sin-sick AND that we are loved by God. In this way we can embrace a repentance unto life.

In conclusion,

We rest in the fact that this person's death was sovereignly determined before the beginning of time by God. He died EXACTLY when he was supposed to die. We repent with a view towards loving people more, loving Christ more, and embracing the Gospel more.

So that, as we are conformed more and more unto the likeness of Christ, the next time a neighbor grabs hold of our leg, we won't shake him off. Even so, we will fail again, and we will run back to Him again. Repent, Believe, Fight, Repent, Believe, Fight, … such is the rhythm of our walk with Christ.

praise the Lord for wise words!!!

in other news, we're going over their apartment (the friend whose dad said the above) tonight to watch LOST. holy smokes! neither of us have ever watched an episode, we have both always wanted to because of everything everyone has been saying about it, and we've been wanting to hang out with these people more! joy! we don't own a tv. it's going to be weird to watch 2 hours (we're going over early to watch last week's episode!) of television when we're not at either of our parents' houses!! they suggested that we watch the 8 minute and 15 second recap of all seasons - it's quite impressive, and pretty hilarious.

this is my favorite picture today:

On The Edge Of The Dark Sea Of Darkness

Adventure. Peril. Lost Jewels. and the Fearsome Toothy Cows of Skree.

andrew peterson has finally come out with his latest project - a novel!! i think i've mentioned it before, but now it's here, and i could not be more excited.

pre-order the book!

from BooksChristian.com:

Once, in a cottage above the cliffs on the Dark Sea of Darkness, there lived three children and their trusty dog Nugget. Janner Igiby, his brother Tink, their crippled sister Leeli are gifted children as all children are, loved well by a noble mother and ex-pirate grandfather. But they will need all their gifts and all that love to survive the evil pursuit of the venomous Fangs of Dang who have crossed the dark sea to rule the land with malice and pursue
the Igibys who hold the secret to the lost legend and jewels of good King
Wingfeather of the Shining Isle of Anniera. Andrew Peterson spins a quirky and
riveting tale of the Igibys’ extraordinary journey from Glipwood’s Dragon Day Festival and a secret hidden in the Books and Crannies Bookstore, past the terrifying Black Carriage, clutches of the horned hounds and loathsome toothy cows surrounding AnkleJelly Manor, through the Glipwood Forest and mysterious treehouse of Peet the Sock Man (known for a little softshoe and wearing tattered socks on his hands and arms), to the very edge of the Ice Prairies. Full of characters rich in heart, smarts, and courage, On the Edge of the Dark Sea of Darkness presents a world of wonder and a tale children of all ages will
cherish, families can read aloud, and readers’ groups are sure to discuss for its layers of meaning about life’s true treasure and tangle of the beautiful and horrible, temporal and eternal, and good and bad.

check back soon for a full review!