Day 39
Dear family and followers of Catie’s story,
Today was a good day for Catie as was yesterday. She has moments within each day when we are blessed by the appearance of Catie’s being without being distracted by her physical limitations. Christine often tells her that she is not her body, and while this is true and Catie believes what Christine says, her body does place some limitations upon what her soul can experience. Our mission as parents is to provide her opportunities where she can experience all that she can while we can be her legs for her. At some point we may have to be hers arms as well. The doctors have told us that at some point she may lose her ability to speak, and at that point we will be her voice. I tell her daily that it is an honor and a privilege to carry her and tend to her needs; it gives me an additional sense of purpose. It also provides me with a workout as the pumpkin pie is starting to add up.
I had the opportunity to listen to a CD called “Lead Like Jesus” while I was in the car today. It is a CD that I had listened to in the past, and I had given my copy away. Christine gifted me with another copy and I ravenously attacked it knowing the wisdom that lay within. As I listen to it now in the context of Catie’s journey, it takes on a new level of importance. Part of the discussion talks about success versus fulfillment, and what it is we are trying to achieve. The world would tell us that success is what we are after, and if we were to take a tour of important sites across our country led by conventional tourism, we would make stops at tall buildings, homes of stars, Graceland, monuments, and other symbols or sites of worldly achievement. If we were to take a similar tour through the bible and visit the locations of some of the climactic moments chronicled in God’s book, we would discover something very different. On the shores of the Sea of Galilee, where a small boy offered his lunch, or fisherman walked away from the lives they had known to follow a stranger. In a synagogue where that same stranger highlighted the relative importance of 2 pennies over a thousand dollars. In a small village where a 14 year old girl was asked the question that caused all of creation to hold its collective breath. On a small mountaintop where a father held a knife over his only child. And in an olive garden where the Son of God spilled His Precious blood. In each of these moments when Heaven touched earth, there was no worldly success but there was fulfillment. Fulfillment of God’s plan and fulfillment of the individual who accepted it. The small boy, Peter James and John, the widow, Mary, Abraham and Jesus all fulfilled God’s eternal plan not by succeeding but by surrendering. By giving everything they had, their food, their livelihood, their last 2 cents, their body, their only child or their very life, they surrendered and set in motion God’s plan to change history. It did not matter how much they gave by worldly standards, merely that they gave all that they had.
I do not want to immortalize or romanticize Catie. She is in many ways a normal 7 year old. She has however been given a precious opportunity early on in life to make a choice about whether she is going to follow God’s plan for her life. She has surrendered to God’s plan for her and says at the close of each day. “God, whatever you have in store for me tomorrow, I will accept”. As she sits behind me at midnight eating pumpkin pie, I have just read her the update to this point and she has given her approval. We have just finished watching Catie on CBS news and Jaime Meyers who visited with Catie this week did a great job of capturing the story and Catie’s smile. Christine is finishing the last of the Christmas cards, and I am looking forward to being asleep before 1am. http://www.whptv.com/news/local/story/Caties-Story-Update/AtQ_Qgi1ykGkT5V542pj5A.cspx is the link for the news story.
I leave you with this thought. Many of us get caught up in all of the things we need to do and get frustrated when we do not get to all of them. In the movie Schindler’s List, Oskar Schindler laments at the end of the movie that with the pin he is wearing he could have saved one more person from the concentration camps. Despite all that he did, he was disappointed in his performance. When Jesus hung on the cross and surrendered His life to the Father, he did not chastise Himself for the state of the world He was leaving; He knew that He had done all that the Father had asked Him to do. The work that was left to do would be assigned by the Father to His followers. We cannot ask more of ourselves than He does; that is our ego taking over where our faith falls off. I pray to God for the strength and conviction and the faith that He can guide me to what He wants of me, and that I have the humility to give Him the credit.
May the Father, the Son, and the Holy Spirit bless you and light the way,
Praying for a miracle,
Christine, Kevin, Maggie, Max, Catie, Mia, Molly, and M.E.
