“Lord, you are my portion and my cup of blessing; you hold my future. The boundary lines have fallen for me in pleasant places; indeed, I have a beautiful inheritance.”
Psalms 16:5-6 CSB
Celebration
Good morning to you, crumbles! Or shall I say, “Happy blog anniversary”? Today marks 14 years since that first welcome blog post. The first series we explored was called “Blessing the Boundaries.” At the time, I had crashed into the worst lupus flare I had ever had, one from which I have never entirely recovered. The Ebony Dog and I lived on the sofa, and my chest hurt almost too much to breathe unless I lay on my side.
In that wilderness season, my dear husband Amore told me I needed to start a blog to find my online people and redeem that time. Through that initial post series, I sought to make peace with the very narrow boundaries the Lord had imposed on me (us). I sought to proclaim His boundaries as good and pleasant and to find joy in this “inheritance.”
My health is better now than in those early days, but I am substantially homebound again and don’t know when that will change. We have walked through the loss of Amore’s parents and sister and the recent loss of my mother after a long journey with Alzheimer’s. I have had cancer twice and a long list of surgeries. We have moved house and lost my faithful Ebony Dog but gained Moose Tracks (Mayhem).
Through all this, the Lord has used this place and other online interactions to link me with kindred spirits. He has made real friendships from long-distance interactions with people I may never meet this side of heaven.
His boundaries have indeed proved good, pleasant, and joyful.
A Need
Over the last year or so, He has brought new friends to me through this place, my online home. From them, I have learned that many people with energy-limiting conditions—ME/CFS, Long COVID, fibromyalgia, autoimmune diseases like I have, and many more—find screen reading too challenging to undertake long or often. For some, it exacerbates a wide range of symptoms. However, they may be able to listen instead of read.
Other new friends are caregivers as I have been. Stewarding that gift and responsibility means their best chance to engage with my posts is in their ears while they walk or work on household tasks.
For those new friends and readers, I began recording most posts, but Blogger isn’t very friendly to adding that feature, is it?
It has also become increasingly clear that the normal isolation of chronic/prolonged illness, caregiving, and aging has intensified in desperation and alienation, especially with numerous churches and ministries discontinuing the remote worship, discipleship, and fellowship options that opened up the world to this population at the beginning of the pandemic.
While I can’t address any of these illnesses, the needs requiring care, or the debilitating aging process, I have been praying over what might be mine to do to offer gospel hope and encouragement in this peculiar time. Joni Eareckson Tada has said that people with disabilities constitute the largest unreached people group in the world. The number of people suffering with chronic illness and disability has grown very rapidly since 2020 and does not seem to be slowing down. With regard to Long COVID alone, for example, the research team led by Dr. Danny Altmann estimated a year ago that some 400 million people around the world are experiencing some level of long-term illness months to years after their initial infection.
An Opportunity
In praying for the people whose names and situations I know and the millions I don’t, the Lord has led me to enlarge the boundaries of this writing ministry in order to diversify and expand the ways that the Lord’s work through me can serve the reader or listener. The next step toward that end is to move most of my online energies to Substack: crumbs from His table fellowship here.
Substack makes it much easier to offer and access audio versions of the blog posts. Comment conversations also seem less cumbersome there. That platform additionally opens up numerous new ways of interaction such as a dedicated chat space for subscribers; discussion threads where readers’ thoughts are the featured attraction; video posts and messages; and even a private subscriber podcast for listening to post readings on the go through most common podcast players.
Dreams I have for the fellowship include a Brave Hearts Book Club tailored to those with energy-limiting and financially draining conditions. By choosing Christian classics in the public domain, I can record (or embed) one chapter or section at a time with a few questions to generate discussion. Those who want to and can read the selection can access that kind of ebook at little to no cost if a physical copy is too pricey.
At other times, we could potentially have Zoom book discussions or community Bible reading and prayer or mini-retreats on a spiritual discipline which I’ve found helpful. (We can also have guest writers and teachers.) In this season of loss, it has blessed me to dream about the possibilities (even while daunted by the change).
Topics of more limited interest can have their own sections to which interested readers can opt in if they wish to access the material.
Much of that lies in the future. For the present, the transition itself is the order of the day.
You may be wondering how much effort and complication this will require of you, dear readers.
TL;DR
If you read now via RSS feed reader or on the web and have no interest in audio versions of posts, posts in your inbox, and the other prospective added features, you don’t need to do anything. I will continue to post written and photographic pieces here, though without audio or comment interaction.
If you already receive posts via email, between now and the next post, Lord willing, I will export those subscriptions from Mailchimp to Substack. You also don’t need to do anything. You should be receiving a welcome email from the new platform. You may still reply to me directly from the emails instead of in Substack comments if that is more comfortable.
If, however, neither of the above applies to you, and you want access to audio and video posts and, Lord willing, the kind of online encouragement, discipleship, and fellowship sketched out above, with the style and tone you are used to here, you are cordially invited to subscribe to the new crumbs from His table fellowship at crumbsfromhistable.substack.com
All my Substack content is free, just as this place is. If—and there are no definite plans for this—a paid subscription option became needed in future, we would offer scholarships and/or discounts of some sort so that those who need this community are included, regardless of ability to pay.
This is such a small beginning in the face of immense need, but the crumbs of my loaves and fishes are before the Lord. May He be glorified in multiplying them to sustain faith and hope in those He brings to this fellowship.
I would be grateful for your prayers with and for me and the community which will come together in His time.
“You reveal the path of life to me; in your presence is abundant joy; at your right hand are eternal pleasures.”
In the summer of 2010, I was working my way back to full strength after sinus surgery that spring. Although I had received a lupus (SLE) diagnosis 8 years prior, my illness had been quite stable, with medication and lifestyle adjustments, for more than 5 years. Prior to surgery, the Ebony Dog and I walked 3 1/2 miles most days, and Pilates and strength training were added several days a week. I learned more about nutrition and followed a healthier diet than most Americans, with lots of produce, lean protein, and whole grains and not a lot of sugar.. Amore and I had both worked hard to find a rhythm that worked for my illness, and he worked hard providing for us.
Surgery has extra difficulties for autoimmune patients, so we weren’t surprised that recovery was slower than the doctor promised. Lab tests several weeks after surgery showed that I was still mildly anemic, but otherwise things seemed fine.
In July 2010, the day we departed for a stay with Amore’s parents due to a surgery for his father, I felt more tired, almost out of breath. On the drive down, my voice seemed oddly hoarse as I read aloud. The elastic around my ribs hurt. The seatbelt felt too tight. How odd.
Once we were settled in the home of my in-laws, I couldn’t seem to recover from the five-hour drive. I was so tired. As much as possible, I rested and read, but even sleep proved difficult. And what was that pressure on my chest?
(Aside: Yes, we should have visited urgent care or the emergency room. Chest pain is not a “wait and see” medical symptom. We were away from home for my father-in-law’s cardiac bypass surgery; this was not supposed to be about me. And, truth be told, I was more anxious about going to the emergency room, and in a different city, than I was about waiting out the pain and trying to breathe. But if you have new chest pain, please do the smart thing and urgently seek medical care.)
My father-in-law’s surgery was successful, but he had a long road ahead to full recovery. When our stay was over, we passed the support baton to one of my husband’s sisters. I was truly convinced I would feel better when we were back home and away from the stress and worry over Amore’s dad.
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But I didn’t. The fatigue was so severe that unloading the dishwasher was too strenuous to do all at once. If I took a shower, I needed someone else in the house in case I passed out. My chest hurt so much that I could hardly breathe unless I lay down on my side. So I lay on my side on the sofa all day, for days and weeks and months.
As soon as we returned, I scheduled appointments with my sinus surgeon, asthma doctor, and rheumatologist. Perhaps after sinus surgery upper respiratory infections looked like this? Perhaps I only needed another course of antibiotics?
I did need a round of antibiotics, and my asthma did require a new inhaler, but that didn’t resolve the symptoms. The rheumatologist sent me for a series of scary, expensive tests on my heart and lungs. He was afraid the membrane around my heart was inflamed, so he ordered a month of bedrest and increased steroids and told me not to leave home except for medical care.
Driving was beyond my strength, and Amore did not have remote or flexible work, so my mom drove me about to all these appointments and brought her work to my living room when she could, so I wouldn’t be scared, in pain, and alone.
Eventually all serious explanations for my symptoms were ruled out, and it was determined that my lupus was flaring and causing painful inflammation of the cartilage connecting the ribcage and sternum (“costochondritis”). In other words, “It’s not serious, just painful.” The doctor told me I could resume normal activities, but there remained that pesky problem of my chest hurting too much to breathe when I was upright.
After 6 or 7 months, we finally found a medication to manage the pain safely. I could have wept with relief that first morning after the new medicine. For the first time in months, my first conscious thought of the day wasn't chest pain. I had slept through the night. By that time, however, other pain issues had arisen due to the prolonged forced inactivity. It took years to work through the fallen row of dominos and set a substantial part of them upright again. Not all losses have been recovered even 13 years later.
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There have been unexpectedly good and gracious enlargements of my capacity at times, such as a voyage to Alaska with my parents and husband and a journey to Virginia for the wedding of a young lady I love dearly. The Lord has given me several years of enough stability to assist my parents with time, meals, and company. I now sit with my mom in her living room as she sat with me so many times. Last week the Lord enabled me to walk a whole mile in a state park with my husband. Two days in a row. This is a far cry from where I was before lupus or before 2010, but it is the farthest I have walked at once (without paying for it later in post-exertional malaise) in a very long time. The last few times we’ve been to the arboretum, we have also been able to do without a wheelchair for me. I don’t know whether or how long this will last, but I receive it as a good gift from a loving God and give thanks to Him.
There have also been expected and unexpected brokenness, trials, and sorrows. The last 13 years have held far more funerals than weddings. Three of our four parents have suffered the long farewell of dementia. My mother is still suffering it. We lost Amore’s oldest sister to cancer. Many more surgeries and two rounds of cancer have added complications to my own medical history. Amore has changed jobs three times. Family members have faced life-changing diagnoses and financial hardships. My church has endured an astonishing amount of tumult and loss.
Oh, yes, and there’s this apparently never-ending pandemic that has required a few changes to our lives.
So far, there is no “back to normal” for families like ours, with immunocompromise, long COVID, and other high-risk conditions. Amore and I are still very much isolated in our tiny village of four with my parents. We are very grateful for the many circumstances that allow us to do that, even though we miss things about “before” life. We continue to seek the Lord and seek to steward health, illness, duty, and opportunity one next step at a time. I don’t know whether or how long this will last, but I receive it, too, as a good gift from a loving God and give thanks to Him.
Does that sound strange to you? Life's plot twists don't always feel like good gifts from a loving God, do they? They may come to us wrapped in sandpaper and tied with barbed wire instead of golden ribbon. For those who brave the bloodied hands and tear-stained cheeks, however, trials offer the Christian treasure that cannot be attained any other way.
Only those who mourn know the divine blessing of God's comfort. Only the weak know the sufficient power of God's strength. Broken hearts are uniquely able to receive God's nearness. Knowing Christ in the communion of His suffering (Philippians 3) requires suffering ourselves and experiencing the astonishing grace of His nearness in the midst of it. Suffering can bless us by chiseling our character into greater likeness to Christ.
"Good" isn't always happy or fun. Sometimes it is holy and soul-growing. It is good and worthy of our gratitude when we receive it as one means of knowing the Triune God more deeply.
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My heart breaks for the tens of millions suffering prolonged illness, uncertainty, medical fatigue, inability to find treatment, financial hardships, isolation, and fear from the tsunami of new chronic illness the last three and a half years. And suffering those same afflictions from flaring chronic illnesses. They never seem to stop surprising us with new party tricks, do they? I have drunk from the bitter cup of dreams crushed and youth upended due to unexpected health collapse. If that is you, whatever the nature and cause of your illness (if you even know), please hear this:
You are not invisible to me or to God.
Your life matters. You are worthy of care and support. God loves you.
God hears and answers honest prayers. He doesn’t always answer yes, but He always answers. Call on Him.
Please keep going. You never know when the sun will peek out again and your life will turn for the better. However bleak things seem in this moment, if you are in Christ, this is not the end of your story. All the afflictions of today are actively at work producing the eternal weight of glory ahead of you.
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One gift the Lord has given to sweeten my cup the last 13 years has been this place. Near the end of that first month on the sofa in pain, unable even to care for myself fully, Amore told me it was time to start a blog. He had decided I needed to write my way through whatever was going on. He helped me set it up, and this website was born.
To celebrate 13 years of writing here (and perhaps, for a few of you, 13 years of reading), I am retelling the story of my health journey during that time and leaving you with five things the Lord has taught me in the peaks and valleys of this quarter of my life.
No matter how isolated, alienated, and exiled you or I might feel, no weakness, illness, or disability can alienate or exile us from God. If we have thrown ourselves at the feet of His throne of grace to receive mercy and forgiveness through the life, death, resurrection, and ascension of Jesus Christ, then nothing can separate us from His love. Even the humans who love us most will reach the limits of their compassion and energy, but there is no compassion fatigue in the Triune God. The tinuviel paraphrase of Hebrews 13:5b says, “for He [God] has said and not changed His mind: ‘I will never ever leave you without support, nor will I ever ever desert you in distress.’” He promises that He will never, never, never, never leave His people in the lurch.
Hope is not a feeling of optimism. Hope is not dependent on a happy change in circumstance. Hope is not incompatible with sorrow and grief. Hope is eager expectation born out of confidence in the promises, person, and purposes of God. Jesus our forerunner has dropped the anchor of our hope in the Most Holy Place of God’s presence (Hebrews 6:13-20). With Him securing it, nothing can uproot it, no matter how hot the flame, how fierce the wind, or how intense the storm. God cannot lie. He will not let go of us. He will hold us fast. Hold fast to hope. Hold fast to His promises. Hold fast to Him who holds fast to you. And if you can’t hold fast, lean in. He can hold on tight enough for the both of you.
I am weaker and less in control of my life than I ever really thought, and Christ in me is stronger than I ever really believed. His strength, goodness, and love, even when I have least felt the consolation of His presence, have kept me putting one foot in front of the other. He is the reason I have not abandoned the faith. The weaker I am, the stronger He is, and His grace really is sufficient (2 Corinthians 12:7-10).
“Acceptance with joy” is a lifelong lesson. When I think I have learned it, a bend in the track reveals more mountain to climb. And that’s ok. Anything is a blessing which makes us pray, as Spurgeon wrote. Anything is a blessing which reminds me of my dependence on God. The “hard eucharisteos” (things for which we struggle to thank God) are material for sacrifice. He transforms them when we offer them, with ourselves and our tears and our inability to accept them with a grateful heart, to Him.
Finally, don’t underestimate the providential grace of God, which can create real friendships out of zeroes and ones, pixels and screens. I cannot thank Him enough for the kindred spirits He has brought me from across miles, oceans, and continents. You know who you are. Thank you for reading and interacting. Thank you for extending kindness to this poor bell sheep, whether I could reciprocate properly or not.
Without regular excavation and remembrance, the miraculous origin story of a marriage can be buried like a time capsule at the heart of the snowball of days into weeks into months into decades that accumulate so quickly. Today, our anniversary, I take my spade of sentences in hand to dig through the accretion of mundane moments to remember where we started.
The United States had soldiers in Vietnam. A new decade was learning to walk. The baby boom had subsided into a baby bust, but no one would know that from the first indignant cry of the second son and last child of Baptist missionaries in East Africa. He spent most of his childhood outside, barefoot, climbing avocado trees and running through tea plantations. He learned to sing and imagine, to improvise and hold plans loosely. Even though he had four older siblings, the demands of missionary life meant they were away at boarding school for most of his first decade. He had an imaginary friend and real friends at school, so he did not want for companionship.
Nine months and two weeks after that boy’s first cry, on the other side of the world, the first daughter was born to an Irish Catholic mother and Italian Catholic father. She spent most of her childhood inside, in ballet slippers, practicing scales on the piano and making up dances to present to any adult she could convince to play the audience. She learned to sing and imagine, to read and snuggle into nests in corners and pillow forts and under the furniture. She had two sisters whose growing up was tightly intertwined with hers. She had a best friend at school and an imaginary friend named Pinky who once had a door slammed on her. The books on her shelves were teeming with fellowship as well, so she did not want for company.
As the years passed, the boy confessed faith in Christ as his Savior and was baptized by his father. He had a beautiful voice that eventually opened doors to sing in public. He learned the Brahms Requiem for All-State Choir and made the cut. On the soccer pitch, he played goalie and earned state honors there as well. In adolescence he sensed the Lord calling him to music ministry, and his church affirmed that. He entered the renowned music school of a state university, intending to major in voice and become a church musician.
As for the girl, she didn’t come to know Jesus as her Savior, Lord, and beloved Friend until high school. By this time her family had left the church of her infancy, but the instrument of her conversion was not her church but God’s Word, which she was reading in preparation for a choir solo. In adolescence she sensed the Lord calling her to music ministry, and her church affirmed that. She entered the sacred music program of a small, church-run liberal arts college, intending to complete that and a masters of sacred music to become a church musician.
Neither path turned out as expected.
The boy found he didn’t love practicing enough to sustain a music major at his school. He changed course and completed a degree that could incorporate his completed music classes and equip him with computer skills. And allow him to finish on time. While completing his degree, he discovered a Bible church nearby and immersed himself in its college ministry and short-term missions. His ministry dream shifted from music to missions, and he raised support, sold or gave away everything he owned, and prepared to move to Eastern Europe to share the gospel and make disciples.
But that fell through, and he spent a year in ministry in Cambodia instead.
Meanwhile, the girl faced heartbreak and disillusionment, discovering in her freshman year of college that her church didn’t believe what she thought it did. She tested its teachings against the Bible, which she was reading cover-to-cover for the first time. Try as she might, she could not make them reconcile. She changed course and left university. Bereft of church community and what she thought was God’s blueprint for her adult life, she couldn’t see a path forward in any other major. She did not finish on time. When the boy was in Cambodia, she was embarking on a new course of study in English through the distance-learning programme of the University of London. While she studied, she worked in the public school system and dreamed of going to seminary and becoming a missionary. Through her sister, she discovered the same Bible church which had sent the boy overseas. She drove an hour each way on Sundays and at least once during the week to be as involved as she could be while working and studying for her degree. She never met the boy there, even after he returned from Cambodia and began seminary himself.
Eight years after she graduated from high school, she earned the credential needed for acceptance to seminary. The same seminary where her pastor had studied. The same seminary, as it happens, that the boy attended. The summer before her classes began, she stayed with a friend near the church and was able to attend early-morning missions prayer one week. The boy was there too. After all, he worked for the missions office. He introduced himself and asked the usual questions. When he learned that she wanted to move to that town and didn’t yet have work, he picked up the phone and called his former employer to help her get an interview there. She was grateful but also unsettled. This seemed awfully friendly for a first encounter. She was not interested in a boy. Her heart belonged to Greek and Hebrew.
By this time he was in his final year of a master's degree and eagerly anticipating life as one of the first missionaries sent out directly by their church after graduation. She was a new student, feeling like a deer caught in the open meadow during hunting season, desperately looking for one or two safe people to hide behind. In her first class on her first day, she discovered three other girls from her church were there too. Two of them knew her sister, so that gave instant connection. They shared the same second class too, so they all sat together again. Then came chapel, where the girls met up with some boy students from the same church and everyone sat together in a group. Then they all meandered as a unit to the cafeteria for lunch. The boy was part of that group, and sometimes they would end up next to each other in chapel. He held the hymnal and they harmonized. He had a beautiful voice.
Even though the girl was not interested in dating, let alone anything more, ten years before, as a teenager reading Elisabeth Elliot’s Passion and Purity, she had determined that, if ever there was a boy for her, she wanted to follow the courting model and not the cultural norm of dating. She also, like Elisabeth, wrote out a list of qualities she considered important in her future mate, should such a one exist.
As the weeks rolled by, lunchtime conversations—all in a group, mind you—ticked one item after another after another off that list. How unsettling. What could this mean?
The boy was leading a book club for the church singles ministry. The first book planned was The Lion, the Witch, and the Wardrobe. She still wasn’t interested in the boy, but she was very much interested in discussing that beloved book. She joined the book club, but only for the literary cameraderie, you understand.
The next semester, everyone in the lunch group had classes on different days. Everyone, that is, except the boy and the girl. Another friend of the girl, not from their church, joined them sometimes, but many times she could only stay for part of lunch. Other people popped in here and there, but often the boy and the girl found themselves at the group table alone together in the crowded cafeteria.
Boys generally made the girl nervous, but this boy didn’t. That freed her to engage in conversation without wanting to hide behind something. They became friends, good friends. Through these hours of conversation, they learned that they both held to a courting ideal, both felt called to missions in Asia, both loved old hymns and singing, and both had similar missionary ideals around support-raising and interacting with the people they would serve. The VENN diagram of their reading and musical tastes seemed to overlap more than it differed, and their theological convictions matched completely. Still, the girl’s heart belonged to Biblical languages, and the boy’s heart, as it turns out, belonged to one of the girl’s friends.
As spring began to bloom on the trees and in the gardens, the girl began to realize that she would be happy talking like that for a whole lifetime of meals. It didn’t matter, though, because the boy had made it clear he only wanted friendship.
Until he didn’t. As he told it, he woke up one morning and it was like a lightbulb went on overhead. His affections changed that quickly.
The day before his birthday, he wasn’t at the lunch table. The girl was eating with her friend. She was, however, supposed to give the boy a ride to book club later. He stopped by long enough to hand the girl a missions article. “It might be interesting to talk about on the drive.”
That proved to be his final test of missiological compatibility before he asked a question that changed life for both of them in the most unexpected ways. His courage failed when they stopped for a quick supper, though. They continued to book club the same as always. Afterward, when she drove him to where he’d parked to catch his morning carpool, he suggested stopping for coffee or tea. Even though they’d just had book club at a coffee shop. (It’s a good thing that town abounded with them.)
There he asked to court her. She said, “I couldn’t think of a nicer honor.” He said, “What?” (Coffee shops are loud, even on the porch outside.) She repeated herself. He said, “Well, I guess I need to talk to your parents now.” She handed him the brick of a mobile phone she used when she would be driving late at night.
Their courtship was brief, not quite 5 months from that evening until their marriage. The boy was sure they would have adequate support to spend the new year in India, their designated home base, and they wanted as much time as possible to adjust to marriage before that. They planned a small wedding that was really a worship service, complete with congregational singing and a gospel presentation. That August Saturday was as hot and bright as expected in Texas, but no one minded, or if they did they didn’t complain.
The missions pastor emeritus visited the bride before the service and commented on her lack of nervousness. She said, “Why should I be nervous when I’m in the center of God’s will?” The pastor would then tell the assembled family that before his opening prayer. The girl would later learn how very painful the center of God’s will may be, but not that day. That day went almost entirely smoothly, and the couple’s first act as man and wife was to take the Lord’s Supper together.
Being almost as poor as the proverbial church mice, they agreed to exchange wedding gifts that didn’t cost money. The girl force-fed herself coffee until she could tolerate it without gagging, and they both presented, with no prior arrangement, framed original poems with roses as accents to each other on their wedding eve.
This unexpected marriage has continued to unfold in unexpected ways. Instead of India they moved to Thailand. Instead of moving overseas by the next January, they needed an additional year to build a support team. Life on the field involved many, many more medical appointments than anyone expected. By the end of that year, instead of homesick they were back home, the girl sick with what turned out to be autoimmune disease.
The theme song of their friendship and courtship was “Great Is Thy Faithfulness.” It seemed to appear in every worship gathering, formal and informal. In this unexpected twist of providence, it proved true again. The Lord provided a new job and career at the same company the boy had called to get the girl a job interview at their very first meeting. Instead of earning his living in gospel ministry and doing a little computer work on the side, he earned his living at the computer and taught Bible studies at church on the side.
The Lord has been with him, as He was with Joseph and Daniel, and given him success in this field he never would have pursued on his own initiative. It has allowed him to keep his promise to provide for the girl and ease that one burden as much as he can. It has allowed him to bless others with career assistance they didn’t expect.
Instead of training church leaders in Asia, they served together in adult Sunday school. When the unlikely opportunity arose to help disciple a small group of gifted and delightful high school students, they decided it wouldn’t hurt just to meet the youth, even though obviously youth ministry was not their calling. Three and a half years later, they celebrated the group’s graduation from high school. The boy even co-led the students on a mission trip to Guatemala. One of them is in vocational ministry today. They never would have chosen that for themselves, but God’s providence led in unexpected ways to the most joyful and fruitful shared ministry of their marriage.
Instead of writing a missionary newsletter together, the girl now writes her blog alone. (It was the boy’s idea.) She still has far more medical appointments than she ever thought possible. She still loves God’s Word and missions and dusts off her Greek as needed. She gave up Hebrew for the boy.
So much has changed in 23 years. They would not have believed the hairpin turns and dead ends on that first day, even if the prophet Samuel himself had told them. Some of them have been almost unbearably painful. Others have been almost unbearably sweet. But through all the unexpected providences, God’s faithfulness has been the starlight and shepherd’s crook guiding them. He has not left them or forsaken them, even in the darkest of storms, and He will not forsake you who belong to Him.
Happiest of anniversaries to my one and only. You are still my favorite person to harmonize with.
