Emily Cook's Blog, page 47

Merry Christmas from the Cooks

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Embracing the chaos
(or at least, trying to.)



Christmas morning
He sat behind his pile of presents, wrapping paper stuck to one foot. There were no more gifts to open.  He smiled as he chewed a chocolate santa.
The little boy sighed and said, “I guess a lot of people really just love us.”
Yes, son, yes.
That is what I want you to learn and to know deep down in your little souls, that you are loved.That is why we do the extra things at Christmas. 
That’s why I made the monkey bread late last night so we could have it for breakfast this morning.   That’s why our family travels to see us, or we travel to see them.
We pour on the candy, the hot cocoa, the soft robes and the toy helicopters.We light the incense, and we overflow with song.We dress up for church, we perform and we smile and we hug.We bake and we shop and we create.
Why?We do it so you will knowYou are loved, dear children.
May each moment, each gift, serve only to underline and emphasize that joyful, gospel Word of God for you.
A Savior has been born for you. You are loved.

Merry Christmas!

Christmas blessing to you all.
A hymn for your enjoyment. (It's a new favorite of mine.)
The Infant Priest was Holy Born
by Chad Bird






1. The infant priest was holy born,For us unholy and forlornFrom fleshly temple forth came he,Anointed from eternity
2. This great High Priest in human fleshWas icon of God’s righteousness.His hallowed torch brought sanctity;His hand removed impurity
3. The holy Lamb undaunted cameTo God’s own alter lit with flameWhile weeping angles hid their eyes,This Priest became a sacrifice
4. But death would not the victor beOf Him who hung upon the treeHe leads us to the Holy PlaceWithin the veil before god’s face
5. The veil is torn, our Priest we see,As at the rail on bended kneeOur hungry mouths from Him receive,The bread of immortality
6. The body of God’s Lamb we eatA priestly food and priestly meat;On sin parched lips the chalice poursHis quenching blood that life restores.
7. With cherubim and seraphimOur voices join the endless hymnAnd “Holy, holy, holy” singTo Christ, God’s Lamb, our Priest and King

for the first time in a long time... an update from Kristie

I loved that day. I can still see Konnor and Taylor
giving me a "shout out"
-one where they pointed up
 at me and smiled so big-
then they pointed me out to their cousins --
"look my mommy's back!"
--Kristie
Do you remember my friend Kristie, dear readers? Last year, she was the mother with the bright, tearful eyes, watching her children sing from the back of the church. She had made it in time for the Christmas program, and she soaked up like grace, that moment, that one precious moment that cancer did not steal.She continued to fight her cancer that month, and all the following year.Now, a year later, she has an update for us. 
a day we will never forget...indeed God IS good!!an update from Kristie WesselDerek and I have just gotten back from our third trip to MD Anderson
The trip started out very hectic and out of control honestly!!  The first test they did was standard blood work.  This blood work revealed a creatinine level that was too high for the IV dye that they use in the CT scans rendering this test less than effective, a critically low magnesium—and by critical here I mean they were saying they were amazed my heart had not stopped..
Next, the PET scan…When you get a PET scan you are in this little tube for about 25 minutes with your arms raised up above your head.  It is of course natural for me to fold my hands while in this position.  And pray.  I remember being very open and honest with God.  I admitted to not praying the way that I should, nor as often as I should.  I asked the Holy Spirit to help me on those days when I was struggling.  And then I told myself that for the balance of the PET scan time I was going to focus on a prayer, a prayer of thanksgiving—like in Philippians. 
Do not be anxious about anything, but in everything, by prayer and petition, with thanksgiving, present your requests to God. And the peace of God, which transcends all understanding will guard your hearts and your minds in Christ Jesus. Philippians 4:6-7
I tried very hard to keep the “I wants” and the “I think I need”s from coming out as I realize God already knows just exactly what I need.  So in my prayer of thanks; thanks for all the wonderful people in our lives who have brought meals, sent cards, donated at fund raisers—most probably attending more than one fund raiser and all giving so VERY generously, for those that said prayers, made and decorated sugar cookies J (including some of the most beautifully decorated and shaped cookies I have ever had—they honestly kept me up all night one night as I finally saw all the love and hard work that went into each and every one—I saw the maker methodically choosing each and every cookie cutter and each and every color with nothing short of true love, the next morning it even brought me to tears,  and I am a blubbering mess right now just thinking about them!!-- thanks for wonderful friends who cleaned and decorated the Wessel home for Christmas, for an awesome church family, an awesome family, my two wonderful children and their health, for my angel-Derek and all he has done, for wonderful parents who gave me the wonderful and most important gift of a Christian upbringing, for all White Creek has taught me and is teaching Konnor right now, for two wonderful sisters and their families and their health, for our loving home, for our 2nd trip to Florida courtesy of Inheritance of Hope, for the help I need at just the right time from complete strangers, for a trip the ENTIRE family gets to enjoy……………………………….you get the picture, I tried to stay focused the entire time on my list.
And then after the scan was completed I went to get the blood products and magnesium I was in need of.  The next morning, at 7:30, we went back to the infusion center and got the last bag of magnesium, and then we met with our doctor.
On our way back to the hotel, we got a phone call from the doctor’s office that they were in shock but my counts had rebounded surprisingly well and that no more infusions at that time were needed. I was free and safe to travel home.  My white count was up a little but still considered critical and the only thing that will bring it up is time now.  So be extremely careful in regards to infection they say.Later, as I was waiting to talk to hotel management, I got another phone call from the doctor’s office. He said “Ms. Wessel I just wanted to call and give you the results of your PET scan.  The PET scan shows evidence of no residual cancer.”  
I of course fall to my knees thanking God and in complete shock.  Derek sees me on the floor and comes running over asking are you ok, are you ok.  To which I respond I’m fine, I’m fine, I—am--fine, for the first time in a long time I am fine!!  
To God be the glory!!!  I had the doctor’s office repeat the news and I called again on Friday (the following day) just to be sureJ.  I am still in shock I think.  And I keep running Our God is an awesome God thru my head.  He is most definitely in the miracle business!!  I never thought I would hear those words and almost 2 years-- to the date-- I heard them.  It is my own Christmas miracle.
(I must be honest here and say that my official diagnosis is recurrent Hodgkin’s lymphoma so it might not be a question of if it will return it might be more like when.  It might be a week, a month, a year, 5 years, and then again, it might be never.  I will take what I am blessed with, I will try my hardest not to dwell on it, and for the time being I am enjoying life----------CANCER FREE!!!!) 
Now I ask everyone to please say a prayer of thanksgiving, and please do not forget about us. Hopefully, further testing in February reveals the same, the bone marrow biopsy reveals nothing concerning, and my white count comes up quickly and the rest of the counts get straightened out.  Thanks to each and every one of you, for everything—most importantly for all those prayers; for all those whispers.  Again, to God be the glory!!!  Much love always to everyone!!!
Love Always ~ Kristie
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Evening Prayer

Snow in my backyard, on my grass, and my cemetery.
I remember my God, and His promises.


[image error] Yours is the day, O God, yours also the night; you established the moon and the sun. You fixed all the boundaries of the earth; you made both summer and winter.    Psalm 74:15,16 
Jesus Christ is the Light of the World. The Light no darkness can overcome.
(Evening Prayer, Lutheran Service Book, p243, based on John 8:12; 1:5)

Washing Down Antidepressants with Eggnog

(An essay by Chad Bird, shared with permission)

Kent and I slept through the same sermons every Sunday at the First Baptist Church in Shamrock, Texas. Our butts bruised their way down many a ski slope together. We hunted turkeys by day and raccoons by night. And we bragged about how many girls we'd kissed (though I'm pretty sure we both grossly inflated the numbers). His older brother dated my older sister, and, especially in middle school, we both greatly delighted in being as obnoxious as possible when we were around those two love birds. Kent was a little guy but a force to reckoned with on the football field or basketball court. He was smart, likable, an overall good kid and great friend.

I was unloading a truck at the feed store in town when my mom pulled up one day in late December to tell me that, on his birthday, Kent had put a gun to his head and pulled shut the door to life. Were I to outlive Methuselah, it would still seem like yesterday. It’s one of those moments welded into my memory. Shock and fear and anger and guilt and emotions I didn’t even know were in me—they all came cascading out. A few days later, I, but a teenager, helped bear his teenage casket out of the church, into a world that blinked at us with a potpourri of festive lights that seemed a blasphemy of joy in the vortex of our grief.

Almost a decade later, the parsonage phone rang way too early one Saturday morning. I knew the instant Dale began to speak that whatever he said next would be wounded words. A police officer had knocked on the door of the family's country home earlier that morning. Dale and Roxie's nineteen year old son had fallen asleep at the wheel, hit a guardrail, and been thrown from his pickup. Snow and ice blanketed the town on the day we laid Dewayne’s body to rest. It was December 26. And the day before, as I and my fellow mourners at St. Paul Lutheran church tried to celebrate our Lord’s Nativity, every happy hymn, every joyful carol, was dragged from our lips like a dirge, and the sanctuary liquefied into one vast sea of tears.

I think, for most people, Christmas is the best of times and the worst of times. When I was a boy, I was unacquainted with the cruel nonchalance with which evil disregards the festival calendar. I knew nothing of tear-laden birthday parties and pill-popping Christmases. I sat on Santa’s lap and told him what I wanted under the tree. My family was all together on that happy morning. We all had colorful wrapping paper strewn about our feet when it was all over, new toys to play with, a feast to consume. Christmas was the best of times. And for those sweet boyhood memories, I am everlastingly grateful.

But I know now the darker side of Christmas, the gloom beneath the glitter, a side many of you reading this know all too well. Every December I think of the family of Kent, and the family of Dewayne, and the what-might-have-been memories that must rise to the surface every time the tree goes up and carols flood the airwaves. And though the grief is of a different kind, I think of all the families of broken marriages, of which mine is a part. The Hallmark scene of eager children waking their mom and dad early on Christmas morning to open the gifts isn’t possible when dad is living hours away, and mom’s newest boyfriend doesn’t appreciate some kid jumping in bed with them, especially when he’s nursing a hangover.

Perhaps part of the mistake we’ve made is in forgetting that the first Christmas, the actually birthday of Jesus, started out as the worst of times. Mary and Joseph were in Bethlehem because of taxes, because the money-hungry, tyrannical Roman overlords had forced them to undertake this journey when no pregnant woman should be on the road. No warm, sanitized room awaited them after their trip, but a cold, dark barn. When this young mother went into labor, where was she supposed to lay down to give birth, on rough hay littered with cow crap? Where’d they get light? Warm water? Cloths to clean up the blood? It’s a wonder both mother and child didn’t die that night. The original crèche must have looked like a rural crime scene. This is not the way any baby, least of all Jesus, should have been born.

And yet it was. Far from home, in the dark, in the cold, in the mess, in the blood, in the shit of this world, God was born.

That’s a Christmas story I like, for it’s one I can identify with. More than that, it’s a story that gives meaning and hope to our own dark, cold, bloody, shitty stories of Christmases that seem anything but joyful. For it was on this night that God began to teach us that we don’t need to have a Hallmark Christmas to find peace and contentment and joy. All we need is him.

For Christmas is not presents. It’s not even about family and friends. It’s about God taking on our flesh and blood, being born as one of us, to share our griefs, to bear our sorrows, and to unite us to himself, that we might find in our griefs and sorrows, him. There’s a reason he’s called a “man of sorrows, well acquainted with grief.” The first sound leaving our newborn Lord’s lips would have been a cry. How fitting is that? God knows what it means to weep, to hurt, to suffer loneliness, anger, loss, and, yes, even the pangs of death. You do not have a Savior unable to sympathize with your weaknesses, but one who has experienced them all, so that no matter what your own hurt, he redeems it, and carries you through it.

All I want for Christmas is a God like that.

Lighten our darkness, Lord.

In the name of the Father and of the + Son and of the Holy Spirit.Rejoice in the Lord always; again I say, rejoice! Let your reason be known to all everyone. The Lord is at hand. 

But I can’t imagine that there is too much rejoicing going on today in our country or even throughout the world. Rather, there is great sorrow at the events that happened on Friday in Newton, Connecticut, or in 22 children and elderly who were knifed by a madman in China in the same week. Rejoicing just doesn’t seem to fit. More like sorrow and grief. 

The prophets words we just sung seem out of place: Comfort, comfort, ye my people, speak ye peace, thus saith our God. Tell her that her warfare is over.Surely as John the Baptist sat in a madman’s prison – imprisoned because he preached the word of God – he wondered the same thing the whole world has been asking these last few days. The same question we asked on 9/11 and at Columbine and at Aurora, Colorado. The same question moms and dads ask as they pray for their little one in the NICU. Why, God?For the rest of the sermon, by Pastor Mark Lovett, follow one of the links below.
Listen here.
Read the full text of the sermon here.


You will hear Christ preached. You will find rest for your soul.

Talking about the scary stuff

How do you handle the "scary stuff" in your home?

We've all had to answer that question this week, haven't we?
In our home, we are honest with our kids. Evil is horrible, and they have seen me cry over it. We have prayed together, and we have had many hard discussions.

That said, we also do not allow the news to color their minds with all kinds of scary images, and with the world's perspective. They do not know the shooter's name, but they do know about Victoria.

I'd rather them not know about any of this scary stuff, to be honest. But this life is full of it. We don't dare pretend that it isn't.  We call evil evil, and then we point them to Him who has overcome.

Sometimes we point with tears, and hands that shake, but still, we point.

And He comforts and upholds us, as He has promised.



From Russel D. Moore...

Too many of our Bible study and discipleship materials (whether for Baptist Vacation Bible School or Roman Catholic confirmation preparation or what have you) de-claw the Bible. They excise all the snakes and dragons and wildness. In so doing, they reduce the Bible to a set of ethical guidelines and a text on how gentle and kind Jesus is.

The problem is, our kids know there are monsters out there. God put that awareness in them. They're looking for a sheep-herding dragon-slayer, for the One who can put all the wild things under his feet. Until we can address, with gospel honesty, what scares our children—and ourselves—we can never get to the joyous wild rumpus of gospel freedom.

Read the entire article here

You may also enjoy Not for Sissies: On teaching violent love to children

How do you handle the "scary stuff" in your home?I'd love to hear how you handle these things with your children.

MRI day

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Agnes had her first MRI without anesthesia today. They told her she was the best patient ever (of course!)
Results are in!
ALL IS WELL!

MRI = No change!
They don't need to see her back until August!Also, she told me, "I got a new buddy, and we got to ride the elevator and the escalator, and we got to swim at the hotel, and everybody said I was a very, very good patient!" 


Gracious and loving Lord, we lift up our voices and hearts in praise to You for this excellent news. Continue bless Aggie with good health. And grant Your peace to all concerned. You indeed are the Lord of life; through Jesus Christ, Your Son, our Lord, who lives and reigns with You and the Holy Spirit, one God now and forever. Amen(Prayer by Rich Shields, echoed today by all who love Aggie!)

Aggie heading to Cleveland

Aggie and daddy just drove away, starting the long drive back to Cleveland.It's time for her check-up and regular MRI.

Please pray for her today!
Just another reason I love her: 
Yesterday evening, I was walking around with tears in my eyes, and she happened to be practicing her piano. "Mommy, let me play for you!" she said. So I stopped in the doorway and listened. She played and she sang, "Away in a Manger."  I watched her fingers, and marveled at her brain and her skill, yet again.
She stopped playing and looked up at me with a proud smile. Then, she saw my red eyes.
"Oh mommy," she said tenderly, as if she were the mother and I were the child, "You need a hug." She threw her arms around me and squeezed tight."I know those boys are hard work," she said, "but don't worry. It's almost their bedtime."I didn't correct her. I just smiled and soaked up the sweet love of my daughter.
Aggie, I'll miss you when you are at Cleveland, but I am glad daddy and Jesus are going with you.Jesus, tend to your beautiful Aggie!
(Have you read Aggie's story? Get it cheap on Amazon for a limited time!)

Brain fog and a tired heart

I can’t decide what to feed the family for dinner, even though my freezer is full and my lists are in front of me. I just stare, overwhelmed with the task, and near tears.  Is another meal really necessary? I just want to go to bed.

I call this brain fog, and it comes during times of grief or depression.
I don’t want to be so vulnerable that a tragic event far away can destroy my ability to make a meal for my family. But I am. I am sad and I am tired.  My body, my heart is tired.  World-weary. Tired.
“I’m going to take a nap.  Does anyone want to join me?” I said, and my first baby did.  We are both too big for naps, but we are not too big to need to sit and just hold each other.I lay with her under warm blankets, and we thank Jesus for our “warm, soft bed.” We are still counting those gifts we already have, though we are too lazy and tired to write them down this time.  I hold her and she holds me, and I marvel that she is so big that she can borrow my coat now.I keep my eyes open as I caress her hair. I know the images that will come to mind as soon as I close them.  Her eyes begin to close.
Suddenly the door opens and my other daughter comes in, “I guess I do want to take a nap,” she says. She climbs in on the other side of me, and we lay tangled together. They breathe. And I think I could lay there forever just listening to the beautiful sound of their breathing.
They breathe, and I breathe. My eyes close by accident. I don’t mean to, but I picture the classroom full of dead babies. Big babies, like the ones in my arms, but dead.
I force my eyes open again.I look at my younger daughter, my Aggie. She is asleep already. I see the light from the window behind her, creates darkness that lays like a blanket over her perfect profile.  Her mouth has no jokes, her face has no smile creases. She is still, perfectly still, except for her breath—that beautiful sound of her breath.
My mother heart wants to keep them here under blankets forever, keep them from such evil as we saw in Connecticut.  I want to keep them from grief, from tragedy, from death.
Yet my arms are impotent. My embrace is futile. I wither like grass.
I look at Aggie’s relaxed face, her crazy hair, her head. Her next MRI is this week.  I find it frustrating that the eyes of mother love and worry cannot perform a reliable brain scan. My scans reveal either what I want to see, or what I fear, and neither can be trusted. The scientific answer will settle the question, on Tuesday.Evil is not just out there. Things crumble all around, even right here in this bed, in these bodies. 
How quickly I had forgotten. How powerfully I remember.Surely all flesh is like grass.
Yet my babies, right now, are breathing life next to me at this moment. I listen, and though I fear, I give thanks to Him who made them.  Lord, to whom shall we go? You have the Words of eternal life.
There is no understanding, no comprehending evil and protecting myself and those I love from it.
There is only Jesus--God with us and for us.  There is only the cross, the atonement, the resurrection. There are only His promises.  There is hope and comfort, only in Jesus.

The grass withers and the flowers fall,
    but the word of our God endures forever.Isaiah 40:8

(A prayer from Pastor Harrison. My thoughts added in italics.)
Friend of the little children, lighten the darkness of our hearts. Remember in mercy all who have been devastated by the shooting this week in Connecticut. To Your care we commend the injured and the mourning, the traumatized and the terrified.
Embrace and comfort children around the world who are afraid because they have seen the news. Comfort the mommy-hearts that ache and fear for their own babies. Hold close all of us whose eyes have again been opened to the power of evil and the fragility of this life.
Embrace and comfort each hurting family, O You who have known in Your own flesh what violence and hatred can do, and yet triumphed in love. Give them Your peace and a share in Your hope. Lord, in Your mercy, hear our prayer. Amen.
(prayer from http://wmltblog.org/2012/12/harrison-on-connecticut-pray-for-the-consolation-of-christ/)
-----------------How are you holding up? 
Am I the only one with brain fog and excessive snuggle needs?