God's Lent Child

Elli's grandma and aunt read this poem at Elli's memorial service. It was sent to us by a friend, from another friend who had lost a child recently. It expresses well the way we understand parenthood -- that we are stewards of the children in our families, not their owners, and that God gives them to us to raise for a time.

God's Lent Child
by Florence Correa

I'll lend you for a little while a child of mine, God said,
For you to love her while she lives, and mourn for when she's dead.

It may be six or seven years, or forty-two or three;
But will you, till I call her back, take good care of her for me?

I'll bring her charms to gladden you, and should her stay be brief,
You'll have the lovely memories as a solace for your grief.

I cannot promise she will stay, since all from earth return;
But there are lessons taught below I want this child to learn.

I've searched the whole world over, for teachers kind and true;
And from the throngs that crowd life's lane I have chosen you...

Now will you give her all your love? Nor think the labor vain?
Nor hate me should the angels call, to take this child back again?

To which the parents did reply, Dear Lord, Thy will be done.
For all the joys thy child will bring, the risk of grief we'll run.

We'll shelter her with tenderness, We'll love her while we may...
For all the love this child will bring, forever grateful we will stay.

But should the Angels call for her much sooner than we've planned,
We'll brave the bitter grief that comes and try to understand.

Suffering and the Healing of Our Spirits

My dad shared the following at Elli's memorial service. I asked him for permission to share it here because I so appreciated what he had to say.

In the 9th chapter of John’s gospel, the apostle records the disciple’s question about a blind man’s blindness. Like many today, they assumed that bad things happened to people who had sinned against God as a kind of punishment. Jesus’ answer revealed the shallowness of this kind of thought and provided a positive outlook on all manner of suffering. He said, “It was neither that this man sinned, nor his parents; but it was so that the works of God might be displayed in him.” One of the great works God displayed through Elli was to use her in the lives of many to make them more like Christ.

God uses people like Elli to challenge our preconceptions and wrong ideas about God as well as to draw faith and obedience out of God’s people. Following Christ does not guarantee a life free from trouble. Her care givers had to come to grips with real suffering and helplessness. All of us had to learn to fight our natural selfishness. Literally everything had to be done for Elli, with almost no likelihood that it would ever be different. We had to learn patience in order to communicate with Elli. Because her responses to conversation are much slower than normal, we had to become good listeners.

Her parents sacrificed normal family vacations in favor of simpler plans that could include Elli. Resources that could have gone elsewhere were spent modifying cars and homes so Elli could get around more easily. We rejoiced over progress which in others might be thought small. Sometimes the reward we got was the way her beautiful brown eyes sparkled or by her gentle touch. Those who took the time serving Elli grew and learned to serve Christ by serving her.

Why has God so arranged things that we grow in Christ’s likeness through sorrow and suffering? Elli endured many surgeries to correct her improperly formed heart as well as to correct other problems that resulted from confinement in a wheel chair. The amount of planning that went into each of Elli’s operations was enormous. If all we ever saw was the blood and the cutting, the labored breathing and cries, no one would ever opt for such surgeries, much less put their beloved daughter through them. Yet, we do it because we trust the intentions and the skills of the physicians, and because without the operation, we, or our child, will die.

You see, we are very quick to treat the ailments of the body, but often oblivious to the more serious sicknesses of the spirit. The care and healing of a human soul is far more complicated than any physical surgery. Some of us do not even want to admit that we are sick and so do not come to Christ to be made well. Followers of Jesus Christ have had the first and greatest of the heart surgeries absolutely necessary to save our souls, and all of the pain of that was borne by the Physician Himself. But God in His wisdom has chosen other means throughout our lives to complete the work He began. It is through these often painful events that hard hearts become tender, and selfish men and women become Christ centered. Proud people learn humility by accepting God’s dealing with us, however pleasant or painful, as directed by a loving, wise and all powerful Creator. God matured Elli’s caregivers this way. What Elli learned and became through her life may not be fully known today. But we know from her responses to music, hymns, and the stories and prayers she heard from Joy and Scott, that she loved Christ as much as any 8 year old girl can.

Christians follow Christ because we have concluded that He is trustworthy. We follow Him because our God proved His love for us beyond all question by putting His Son to death in our place for our sins on a cross. Because He is beautiful and magnificent beyond description. Because He is wise beyond all imagination with His brilliance evidenced by the extraordinary design of this vast and beautiful universe. His splendor and majesty are only hinted at by the marvelous gifts of human love and creativity. And so we submit, sometimes with fear as we might to any serious operation, to these secondary surgeries so necessary to correct the twistedness of our persons. And we know, that one day, in God’s perfect time, we will find ourselves in a different sort of recovery room. For Elli, this happened last Sunday morning when she heard a gentle voice say, “It is time to wake up, Elli.” As she opened her eyes she saw the Jesus that her Mommy and Daddy had told her about. The Great Physician took her by the hand and Elli, who has always loved music, found her voice and sang her first song – a song of praise to her God.

A Big Hole at School

Elli always loved school. The people who worked with her there were able to focus 100% of their attention on her, unlike I could when she was at home. They were highly-skilled at finding ways to draw out of a child what was hidden inside their malfunctioning body. We were blessed to be able to find a house we could afford in one of the best school districts in our state, with some of the best special education staff around. I will never be able to thank them enough for their dedication to our little girl.

Elli's special education specialist spoke at her memorial service this week. She has given me permission to post what she said here. Some of the things she said I hadn't even heard yet, as Elli had only been in school 2 months and we'd been focused on her medical situation, rather than her education recently.

My name is Lesley. I was TRULY BLESSED to have been Elli’s support educator at her school for the past 2 years.

Elli greeted all of us daily with her sparkling eyes and smile and it just started your day off right. Elli was such a smart girl. She amazed me and everyone who worked with her daily – each session with her I would end by saying “Elli you are such a cool amazing girl!!!” She beamed.

I was teaching her to read. I was very fortunate to attend a seminar recently and they brought in an expert who had done a lot of research and spent time teaching non-verbal students to read. I was so excited about all that I learned and visions of Elli were dancing through my head during the seminar. I rushed home and called Joy to tell her about my excitement. The next time I saw Elli, we dove right in and I said “Elli, I’m going to teach you to read, isn’t that exciting!” She was bouncing in her chair and smiling.

She did amazing during the short time we worked on the program. She was so smart and always impressed me by her eagerness to learn new things.

Her ability to communicate using her Dynovox device was AMAZING. Just last week she was acting very upset during an activity that I knew she loved. So finally I said “Elli HONEY, what is WRONG?” and gave her the device. She IMMEDIATELY navigated through pages to find her feelings page, then pushed “what’s wrong with me is in here” then pushed “I’m thirsty” then pushed “I need a drink” then pushed “put water in my g-tube”. O.K, mystery solved, I gave her a drink and she was a happy girl.

Last school year she was exercising on the mat with Barb, another thing she loved to do. She was fussy, which was not typical. We asked her “Elli, what is wrong?” and she instantly found feelings again, touched “I’m hurt,” found her ankle on her device, and sure enough, when we removed her sock and leg brace, on her ankles we found a red spot. I am sure Elli is enjoying her new ability to communicate in Heaven, and I bet she is talking up a storm.

Elli was such a good friend at school to everyone she was in contact with both special needs and students in her classroom. This year especially we noticed how much she CRAVED those peer relationships

Deb and Barbara (her wonderful para-professionals here at school for the past 2 years ) would comment daily on how great it was watching her light up with the kids in class. She wanted to be everyone’s friend, and she was!

She enjoyed her circle of friends in 3rd grade very much, and those students just adored her.

Elli was a true hero – constantly struggling to get her body to do what she wanted it to do. It was fun watching her make physical accomplishments at Special Olympics. We cheered her on as she played soccer, grasped and lifted a block, bowled, and shot hoops at basketball. Daily we’d get her to exercise in her walker, and boy did she need motivation to get those legs moving. We programmed silly Veggie Tales songs to get her to laugh on a communication switch. That would make her go! On her last day with us at school on Friday she walked 28 feet. She laughed hysterically as she reached the button and pressed the goofy song we had programmed for her.

Elli loved music; at school and during our afternoon group in my room, she would bounce up and down as we sang our Days of the Week song and Months of the Year song. Her spirit was with us as we sang for the first time without her on Tuesday. I was imagining an energized Elli dancing and singing along with us using her new voice and strong legs up in heaven.

Every day as Elli left her classroom, the class would sing “BYE Elli, we'll MISS you!!” Elli would laugh and smile a radiant smile.

Well... Elli we WILL miss you and know you are smiling down upon us now. Thank you for blessing each of us while you were here. We can’t wait to see you again in Heaven. As we mourn for you here on earth because we miss you dearly, we know that you are now FREE, and we celebrate your life.

We love you, Elli.

To Elli, from Your Daddy

This was written and shared by my husband at tonight's memorial service for our daughter Elli. As always, he wrote and spoke beautifully. Elli was so blessed to have such a man for her earthly father.



I miss you, Elli. The sound of your voice is still fresh in the house. I can almost still hear them. My head has whipped around more than once since Sunday when I thought I heard you. My grief runs deep. My big girl is gone to be with Jesus.

I’m writing this in the living room next to your empty wheelchair, with your name embroidered in purple (your favorite color) on the back rest and your pink flower backpack still draped over the handles.

Your chair is so sadly empty, yet so gloriously empty at the same time. The Apostle Paul said, I am “sorrowful, yet always rejoicing.” There’s no better way to express how I am feeling right now.

Next to sending His Son to die on the cross, choosing me to be your daddy was one of the most precious gifts God could have ever given me. I was 26 when I became your daddy, and my life would forever be changed.

I want to tell these people what this precious gift of being your daddy means to me.

Being your daddy meant understanding that parents are caretakers, not owners. That meant two things: 1) I would not have you forever, and 2) I would one day give an account of how well I took care of you.

Being your daddy meant opening your bedroom door in the morning and seeing your bright cheery smile. You were so much more of a morning person than I am. Your smile made my mornings much easier.

Being your daddy meant just hanging around the house with you, playing your favorite music, reading books, playing in the sprinkler, and taking walks down Willow Lane.

Being your daddy meant basking in your excitement when would we press play on that music CD you had chosen on your Dynavox. Your smile was because you knew the next 30 minutes will be filled with familiar melodies. You loved a familiar song.

Being your daddy meant laboring hard with Mommy and your teachers and therapists to try to understand what you wanted and needed and were feeling inside, because you couldn’t express these things with words. I would like to think that we scratched the surface of understanding these things. But I have a feeling that when I see you in heaven some day, you will be taking me aside to have a word with me and you will say something like, “Daddy. Seriously. I meant this, not this. You were way off!”

Being your daddy meant serenading you as I gave you a shower and cutting loose with songs I would probably never sing in public. You loved cheesy 80s songs by Chicago. You loved Karen Carpenter (wait, I did sing a Karen Carpenter song in public). You loved for daddy to spin you round and round after your shower, still wrapped up in your bath towel. It seemed like the highest point of your day, and I will never forget those belly laughs as we spun round and round with wet hair and the smell of soap in the air.

You couldn’t speak, but oh, you knew how to laugh.

Being your daddy meant seeing so clearly what matters most in life. You rescued daddy from putting too much stock in his career and the empty promises of earthly success to rush home and help mommy take care of you. You kept mommy and daddy loving Jesus and clinging to Jesus for our hope and our strength and our encouragement, more than anything else.

Being your daddy meant brushing your hair and brushing your teeth, dressing you and feeding you, lifting you up and setting you down, pushing you from place to place and experiencing the world with you from just above your head.

Being your daddy meant playing lots of word games with you. One of your favorite things to do was have fun with words, swapping out vowel sounds and adding extra syllables. Changing the lyrics to a song was the one sure way to get your funny bone. You were definitely born into the right house for that. I invented a new word this week in your honor. It’s the word “cryle” – which means crying with a smile. I’ve been doing a lot of that.

Being your daddy meant having a front row seat to watch God do very big things through very small things. You heart was the size of a walnut when they first operated on you at 3 weeks old. For more than 12 hours they worked to reconstruct your heart, and came out of the operating room smiling in disbelief. It was the first of many times you would overcome the odds. They had given you a 20% chance of surviving that day.

The ripple effect of that surgery sent shock waves of repentance and reconciliation through our family, our friends and countless strangers looking on. And the 3 surgeries after that had the same effect.

It is a gross understatement when I say that God did something very big with something very small. He took five loaves and two fishes and fed untold thousands.

Being your daddy was a precious gift that I will cherish forever.

In his biography on the legacy of Jonathan Edwards, John Piper writes these few words spoken by Edwards’ wife after his death, which echo my heart as I reflect on Elli’s life. Piper says:

“Upon hearing the news that Jonathan had died, his wife Sarah wrote in a letter to their daughter Lucy: ‘O what a legacy my husband, and your father, has left us! We are all given to God; and there I am, and love to be.’ His legacy is that when he left this earth, he left God with his family—and with us.”

Elli, when you left this earth, you left God with us. There we are, and there we love to be.

We will see you soon, princess.

Remembering My Elli-Girl

Tonight we celebrated Elli's life at a memorial service in her honor. We have been carried along by the love and prayers of so many friends, family members, and total strangers who have heard our daughter's story and been touched by her. I don't know for sure how many came, but our best guess is that between the visitation last night and the service tonight, we've hugged over 500 people. I was amazed by the number of people who traveled from out of town, and by the number of people who came who had met Elli once, or not at all. What a blessing and an encouragement to us.

I thought I would share here what I said tonight. My prayer was that both of us would be able to speak clearly and completely, and thanks be to God, He got us through. I decided to keep my memories light, as I knew if I started crying, I wouldn't be able to collect myself again.

Elli was always accompanied by stuff. She was severely limited by her body, needing total support just to sit upright. Equipment and medications and feeding supplies were an essential part of her gear every day.

As her mother, all of those things seemed to fade into shades of gray, while the little girl in the middle shone out in brilliant color. Tonight I’d like to introduce you to the rambunctious and irrepressible girl I knew.

The first several months of Elli’s life were really tough for her. She was living with a poorly functioning heart and couldn’t digest lactose. One of her vocal chords had been paralyzed by the breathing tube, so she had no voice. We used to say that her default mood was irritated and it took tremendous effort to make her happy. After her second heart surgery and new formula, she was finally able to get past the pain and let her personality emerge. We took great delight in those moments when she would reveal a little spark of the person hiding inside her uncooperative body.

The first time we ever heard her laugh, she was in a baby swing at our apartment. I was singing a Bible song with hand motions and trying to tickle her. She didn’t really know how to laugh – it just rolled out of her in this low chuckle that would turn out to be her trademark laugh.

I’ll never forget the morning I was getting her ready for school and preparing to take the younger kids to the zoo with some friends. I was very careful to avoid the use of the word “zoo” that morning, as I didn’t want Elli to feel like she was missing out on anything. I told the other kids to put shoes on and that we were going to put sunscreen on once Elli got on the bus. The next thing I knew, she had gone to her zoo page on her Dynavox and was talking about going to see the manatees (her favorite animal there).

She has been working hard to learn to drive a power wheelchair. Last summer she spent time every week practicing. One day when I picked her up, her therapist, Missy, told me that Elli had accidentally driven herself into the boys’ bathroom. Missy had backed her out, telling her that it was the boys’ bathroom and girls weren’t allowed. The next thing Missy knew, Elli had driven straight back into the boys’ room with a great big mischievous grin on her face!

Every time her brother and sister would start campaigning for me to take them to McDonalds, Elli would head straight to her McDonalds page and chime in with “McDonalds French fries” or “yogurt parfait.” Their teamwork was nearly irresistible.

Elli loved to mess with people, too. She learned to roll over at a pretty young age – probably around age 2. She would roll onto her belly constantly at home, then growse and complain about being stuck there until I or someone else would roll her back. Then she’d do it again. After 6 1/2 years of working at it and working it, she was almost able to do it. But… she never once rolled over for anyone at the hospital or in private therapy! She rolled over last year at school, but refused to roll this year, even after I blew her cover and told them she was pulling their leg.

She wasn’t above messing with me either. While she would walk across the gym and the resource room at school and down the hall for her physical therapist at Children’s, she refused to walk one foot in our home.

Elli was quick to size people up. Last year, in second grade, school got a little less fun for her – she was expected to actually listen in subjects like science and math and reading. She complained loudly, disrupting class, and earning herself a ride back to the resource room… which was exactly what she wanted. Fortunately, her aides realized pretty quickly that she was working the system to her advantage. They changed things around and Elli got much better about listening quietly. But still, as recently as last week, I got notes home from school saying she had needed three time outs and had lost her video privileges at lunch. Of course, last night I learned that the resource room staff were pretty much putty in her hands. She came in for time-out giggling, and got the whole room giggling with her. Her laugh and her impishness were infectious that way.

Elli also loved her family dearly. Her favorite people outside of our family were her grandparents, aunts, uncles, and her in-home helpers, Julie and Patrice. She nearly threw herself out of her chair every time we told her relatives were coming to visit or we were going to visit them. She loved bouncing around in the waves or the sprinkler on the beach buggy Grampa made, riding around the yard with Papaw on his 4-wheeler, having tea parties with Mamaw, and dipping strawberries in chocolate and making cookies with Gramma. She talked about those visits for months. She greeted Patrice and Julie with her beautiful smile every day when they arrived to help me with her.

All of this showed me that in so many ways, Elli’s mind worked just fine. And as patient as I tried to be with her, I know that she had to be 10 times more patient with me. We constantly underestimated her. My greatest desire for her was for her to learn to read and write so that she could finally say exactly what she wanted to say the way she wanted to say it. I know that one day, when I leave this life, we will finally be able to go for a walk and have a long long long talk. I look forward to that very very much.

Elli's Homegoing

It’s with a heavy heart that we are writing to tell you that Elli went home to be with the Lord this morning.

It is a great mercy of God that Elli went peacefully in her sleep, at home in her bed and her familiar surroundings. No life-support machines. No IVs. No pain or distress as far as we could tell. She was getting over a mild cold and had seemed to be doing better. There were no indications whatsoever that this was coming.

Yesterday, she was up early with her cough – about 6am. I got up with her and gave her a nice, warm shower because she had spit up a little bit in the night.

Later on Saturday morning, I stayed home with her while Scott took the other 3 kids to my parents’ house to get some firewood. While he was gone with the other kids, she and I hung out on the couch, watching videos and spending some good time together, since Elli was still getting over her cold and needed to rest. Elli took a nap in the middle of the morning, which was no surprise since she had been up so early.

Elli spent the day at home, listening to her favorite music, watching Veggie Tales and Wonder Pets DVDs and talking on her Dynavox. Yesterday evening, Scott and I worked together to make Elli’s favorite dinner – homemade pizza. We pureed a slice for her and spoon fed it to her - she ate really well.

We did our usual bedtime routine. We sat around Elli’s bed, as we always do, read a Dora book that Little Girl had picked out, and, as always, Scott embellished the words that were written in the book. Elli always knew when he embellished the words, and she would smile. On this particular night, we really wanted to see her smile since she hadn’t been smiling as much lately with her cold.

After the Dora book, we spent a few minutes working on our memory verse. It was Psalm 16:11 – “You make known to me the path of life; in your presence there is fullness of joy; at your right hand are pleasures forevermore.”

Then we sang a song together that repeats these words 3 times:

Jesus is the Rock of my salvation
His banner over me is love

The kids really got into the motions, and Elli was happier than she had been all day as she watched them. It was obvious that her cold was much better.

Then we had prayer time. Older Boy prayed and thanked God that we had so much fun at Gramma and Grampa’s. Little Girl also thanked God for our time at Gramma and Grampa’s. Then Scott closed in prayer, asked for a good night’s sleep for everyone, and tucked everyone in their beds.

Scott's last words to Elli at bedtime have been a solemn time for quite a while now. About a year ago, he resolved to treat it like the last time he would ever look into her eyes. His routine is to hold both of her hands in mine, bend over very close to her face and whisper Numbers 6:24-26 in her ear:

The LORD bless you and keep you; the LORD make his face to shine upon you and be gracious to you; the LORD lift up his countenance upon you and give you peace.

She always looks into his eyes and smiles, her eyes sparkling. Then he kisses her on the forehead and strokes her hair, telling her "I love you, you are so precious," about two more times between turning out her light and closing the bedroom door.

We can’t tell you how thankful we are that last night was no exception to that routine. Thank you, Lord, for this last moment you gave Scott to usher Elli into eternity with a pronouncement of God’s blessing. We would not have wanted our earthly goodbye to be any other way.

I made 2 more visits to Elli’s room between 8:30 and 11pm to give her some cold medications through her feeding tube and check on her. On both occasions, she stirred when I entered the room, which was typical. I stroked her hair and kissed her goodnight as she drifted back to sleep. The last time we saw her alive was this visit from me at 11pm while she was sleeping comfortably.

I can’t help but think that Psalm 16:11 may have still been fresh in her memory as she stepped into “fullness of joy” in the presence of her God.

Elli was such a rare and precious gift to us, and to everyone who knew her. She endured the pain of several lifetimes in eight short years. From 3 days old, she was in an all-out fight for her life. We have seen her at death’s door many, many times. And we have seen her elated and brimming with life many, many more times.

Elli leaves a legacy of the glory of God in her wake. Few met her, probably, who did not stop to consider what mattered most. She was an ever-present reminder that “we ourselves, who have the firstfruits of the Spirit, groan inwardly as we wait eagerly for adoption as sons, the redemption of our bodies (Romans 8:23).”

We are stunned at her sudden departure. I think we all expected a long, difficult battle in the hospital. While we miss her terribly and are still trying to wrap our heads around the fact that she is gone, we smile to think of her running, dancing, and singing, free of the broken body she lived in here. Our lives will be very different now, but we pray that we will never forget the lessons she taught us.

Elli was an ever-present reminder that we have an unwavering Lover of our souls. And He is a tender Rock, the rock of my salvation, whose banner over me is love.

Getting the Hang of Saving Money

Today I went to the local grocery store. It has been a couple of weeks, so I was low on a number of staples. However, with the help of a printout from The Grocery Game website and the coupons I've been collecting for a couple of months now (I lost my original stash and had to rebuild from scratch), I'm rather proud of today's receipt.

Savings today
Total store promotions $15.31
Total non-coupon savings $62.86 (includes two store coupons, one $2 and one $8)
Total coupon savings of $7.10
Savings total $85.27

Thanks to my high school algebra class, I figured out that I bought $250 worth of groceries for $165.33, or 34% off!

I have one more store to visit, but it will be a much shorter, smaller trip. And hopefully I won't need to return to the store again for 2 weeks. One thing I'm still not good at is anticipating things I'm going to run out of. I just make lists of things we have run out of!

A Christian Can Also Be a Democrat

(Much of this was put together by my friend Phil, so many thanks to him for condensing his thoughts so carefully and thoughtfully.)

I had always been in the you-can't-vote-for-a-democrat-because-of-abortion camp, and I voted for GWB in '00 largely because of this issue and because he claimed to be a Christian. In ’04, I voted for him mainly because of the Iraq war – I was concerned that a drastic change of policy there would put our men and women at great risk. (I also couldn’t get behind John Kerry – he was utterly uninspiring, and my Democratic friends agree with me on that!).

I'm passionately pro-life and have been confronted with the very real choice to terminate a pregnancy based on a devastating diagnosis. But I have grown more and more upset by the way Republicans use this issue to make Christians fall in line with the rest of their agenda, without actually delivering results.

Fact: the number of abortions has declined for the last 20 years, declining at its fastest rate when Clinton was in office. It has leveled off under GWB. I am by no means praising Clinton's pro-life credentials, but rather pointing out that it isn’t the black-and-white issue the religious right makes it out to be. The supreme court nomination process is far from a sure bet too, since justices nominated by every republican president from Nixon to the first Bush have voted pro-abortion. Republican Christians have used abortion as a voting crutch, a short-cut to avoid thinking critically about the other serious challenges facing our nation. They have also resorted to using manipulative techniques such as fear and intimidation (“they are going to take your children!” and “that man is the devil!”), instead of thoughtfully and calmly and peaceably responding and debating the issue. Jesus said that if a man strikes you on the cheek, turn to him the other also. Proverbs teaches that a calm and quiet answer turns away wrath. I’ve seen NONE of that demonstrated by passionate Christians in the public eye. Their lives and words have instead shown their character to be no different from the people they oppose. Not only that, but this behavior has so polarized our nation that it's become very difficult to maintain relationships with people with whom you disagree politically. (Comments on my wall being a great example of this.)

On a side note, pro-choice people are NOT pro-abortion. There is a difference… if you will sit down and talk with them. I’ve done this and discovered that we all agree that abortion is tragic. They don't want more abortions! They point out that the real issue is convincing pregnant women to make a different choice, or for couples to be more responsible about getting pregnant in the first place. Working on these two things is something we can do together AND is something that will actually reduce the number of abortions.

Setting the abortion issue aside, serious Christians will disagree about which party's platform does the better job of satisfying the Bible's call for justice and mercy in society. But when I compare the entire platforms of both candidates, I find that Obama's priorities are more in line with my own, and with how I interpret the Bible.

In particular, Obama is much more serious about extending healthcare to those without it and giving the poor, uneducated, and disabled a leg up -- and to me, that's a pro-life issue. He's also much more serious about ending the Iraq war and using diplomacy to prevent future conflicts, and to me, that's a pro-life issue. He's also shown a greater commitment to reducing our carbon emissions, which is a stewardship issue.

Many people have said that the Iraq war is their single issue pointing them towards McCain, and I understand that. However, I think that a timeline for withdrawal of troops from Iraq is wise at this stage. People often need to be pushed towards independence, from 20-somethings to nations. So I think that our country needs to sit down with the Iraqi government and set a mutually-acceptable timetable for total independence. Without this, what incentive do they have to do it themselves? Why not take the "free" help from the U.S. and other nations?

The candidates’ energy plans were a big factor for me too. McCain's plan is to increase domestic oil consumption, with no new money invested in new technologies. (Not that you'd know it by all the windmills in his commercials. Instead, he just re-shuffles existing tax credits in that area.) Obama's plan is much lighter on the domestic oil front and much heavier on the new technologies front (with real investment), and I believe that's exactly what we need to be doing. If we just get more oil locally, our country will never get off its butt and convert to new forms of energy--we'll just keep putting it off. Sure, we may not need to buy as much oil from the Russians and Saudi's, but they'll still have it as a weapon to wield over other countries. Why shouldn't America be the country that produces and exports new forms of power and efficient transportation? Why shouldn't we make money off of the energy sources for the next century and simultaneously take a major weapon away from our enemies in the world? We'll never do it unless our leaders makes it a priority, because our businesses have too much invested in the status quo and too much incentive to focus on short-term profits.

The budget deficit is also a huge deal to me, and the non-partisan Tax Policy Center forecasts that over the next 10 years, Obama's plans would increase the deficit by 3.5 trillion, while McCain's plans would increase it by 5 trillion (full report ). I'm certainly not excited by an increase of any kind, but if the proposals I prefer anyway also increase the deficit the least, then it's a no-brainer for me.

I used to like McCain, but he's not at all the candidate he was in 2000. He has completely reversed himself on several issues in order to cow-tow to the far-right base, and I find that distasteful. I was also very turned off by the Sarah Palin pick. She has resorted to the same sort of name-calling and character-bashing that has unfortunately characterized much of Republican campaigns in recent years. Her appointment also demonstrates that they never believed any of the inexperience criticisms that they leveled at Obama. And hearing republicans go on and on about a glass ceiling and sexism in our society is just embarrassing. I defer to the talented Tina Fey and Amy Pohler in their skit putting Sarah and Hillary at a podium together...

Writer's Block

It isn't that we're suddenly not doing much. Or that the kids have stopped saying and doing funny things. Or that the other material I usually write from has dried up.

I think it's that I'm tired. The last 6 weeks have been non-stop, and at points have been incredibly difficult and emotional. I wrote a few months ago about how we were getting a van for Elli. That miracle story dissolved away into a long, drawn-out process that finally culminated last week in an appeal to a county committee. That appeal meeting probably ranks up there in my personal top-ten most difficult conversations ever. Between that and all the other stuff going on, I've been running out of steam before dinner is cooked. Writing after the kids go to bed is simply out of the question.

Oh... the appeal? We are very thankful that God moved the committee to decide in our favor. We finally have the funds available to equip a newer van for Elli, so Scott and I are driving it to the manufacturer this weekend to get the ramp installed. Installation is actually a 4-week process that can't start til all the paperwork is in order, but this was our best opportunity to deliver it.

I'm really looking forward to the weekend. We are leaving the kids with friends and family and are not driving home right away. We're going to spend a few nights by ourselves, enjoying some quiet and hopefully getting some rest before things pick back up again for the holidays.

Maybe I'll get some writing done while we're gone, too!