Updates | karinaeide

Updates to KarinaEide.com

January 2018- I wanted to share Dagnyrae's beautiful tribute to Karina. I'm so touched that these amazing friends
have shared so much. I know from reading Karina's fiction stories that she hoped she wouldn't be forgotten. What an honor to have these amazing people remember her in such beautiful ways. They are her legacy.

12/3/2015 - It's always tough making it through Thanksgiving and the Christmas season because this was prime Karina-time...baking pies, making cards, making us Spritzrengen cookies and then posting warning post-its so that we didn't eat them all before she was going to some club event.

We are pushing on as bravely as we can. A generous donor asked that we name his college scholarship for dyslexic students in Karina's honor. We're thrilled and honored by that. 16 students will be receive $2500 to help fund their education.

I'm also starting to make the first organization attempts for a Little Book of Courage that I hope might be able to help other parents who are grieving. The hardest thing about being without Karina is being without Karina. She was such a sunbeam to us.

7/12/2015 - Time has frozen for me. It still seems like Karina was here yesterday. I think that's a good thing.
I wanted to update because it seems Karina was on a lot of people's minds although it's over a year now. There was high school graduation of course but Dagny published her senior project Precious Saints which
had some wonderful poems and stories (including Karina's) all about the theme
of cancer. It's moving and profound - a living testimony. All proceeds will be
donated to Make A Wish.

And listen to amazing Maggie Topper give her speech on grief. I am overwhelmed.
Maggie is a remarkable young woman who perfectly captured the awkwardness
and often double tragedy that deaths can have on people and their relationships.

Why is it that even Christians struggle and knowing what to say or how to act and
help a grieving family? God is working through Karina's death and Maggies grief
to help and save more lives.

Christina was also just in touch with me this past week - I can't remember
if I mentioned, but she helped Brock and I with our non-profit this past summer
after her missions trip to Thailand. It was an incredible help of course but
we were excited for her when she learned she won an internship to go to
Washington DC this summer to work for the Senator of Montana.

When she got there (she didn't know anyone in Washington DC) - she discovered
that another intern in the office was the older sister of the young lady who won
Karina's Courage and Compassion Award!!! So Christina had interviewed her younger sister for our blog!

I love stuff like this because when you're going to the ends of the earth - it's just little reminders that our Father is close by
and we're never far from home. I remember when Karina and Brock and I were traveling with Karina to have her first lung surgery
in Germany - Karina was missing Teka very much and there was all the uncertainty of what we were to find in Germany. Well, on the plane ride over - the movie Beverly Hills Chihuahua was playing on the plane on tape loop - so Karina and I watched it over and
over again - and it made us feel a little less homesick (one of the main characters looked a lot like Teka).

I miss Karina terribly, but I still feel that her passing here on Earth is not in vain - and I'm thankful for all these blessed events in the
shadow of our loss. I have ben reading and enjoying Elisabeth Elliott's A Path Through Suffering. I highly recommend it.

John 12:24 keeps appearing in my thoughts: "Unless a kernal of wheat falls to the groundand dies, it remains only a single seed. But if it dies, it produces many seeds."

4/5/2015- It's your first Easter in Heaven dear girl.

This whole time you have been so close - all the turning of the seasons bring it back. We loved each other all so much. In spite of everything, such golden times.

Samuel Rutherford and George MacDonald are for me this morning. It reminds me that I also need to work on the book,too, the Little Book of Courage.

"Never be discouraged because good things get on so slowly here; and never fail daily to do that good which lies next to your hand. do not be in a hurry, but be diligent. Enter into the sublime patience of the Lord. Trust to God to weave your little thread into the great web, though the pattern shows it not yet. When God's people are able and willing thus to labor and wait, remember that one day is with the Lord as a thousand years, and a thousand years as one day; the grand harvest of the ages shall come to its reaping, and the day shall braoden itself to a thousand years, and the thousand years shall show themselves as a perfect and finished day."

"God will be better to us than we think, however expectant we may be."

For those of you who are experiencing losses:

"Your one foot is here, and your other foot in the life to come, and to leave off loving, desiring, or grieving, for the wants that shall be made up when your Lord and you shall meet. Then shall you rejoice 'with joy unspeakable and full of glory - and your joy shall no one take from you.' It is enough that the Lord has promised you great things; only let the time of besowing be His own."

And here is Tim Keller's wonderful sermon which was a great Easter reading for us today.

Rememberance and Peace

As a minister, of course, I’ve spent countless hours with people who are struggling and wrestling with the biggest question — the Why question — in the face of relentless tragedies and injustices. And like all ministers or any spiritual guides of any sort, I scramble to try to say something to respond and I always come away feeling inadequate — and that’s not going to be any different today. But we can’t shrink from the task of responding to that question. Because the very best way to honor the memories of the ones we’ve lost and love is to live confident, productive lives. And the only way to do that is to actually be able to face that question. We have to have the strength to face a world filled with constant devastation and loss. So where do we get that strength? How do we deal with that question? I would like to propose that, though we won’t get all of what we need, we may get some of what we need three ways: by recognizing the problem for what it is, and then by grasping both an empowering hint from the past and an empowering hope from the future.

First, we have to recognize that the problem of tragedy, injustice and suffering is a problem for everyone no matter what their beliefs are. Now, if you believe in God and for the first time experience or see horrendous evil, you rightly believe that that is a problem for your belief in God — and you’re right — and you say, “How could a good and powerful God allow something like this to happen?”

But it’s a mistake (though a very understandable mistake) to think that if you abandon your belief in God it somehow is going to make the problem easier to handle. Dr. Martin Luther King, Jr., in his “Letter from Birmingham Jail,” says that if there was no higher divine law, there would be no way to tell if a particular human law was unjust or not. So think. If there is no God or higher divine law and the material universe is all there is, then violence is perfectly natural — the strong eating the weak. And yet somehow, we still feel this isn’t the way things ought to be. Why not? Now I’m not going to get philosophical at a time like this. I’m just trying to make the point that the problem of injustice and suffering is a problem for belief in God but it is also a problem for disbelief in God — for any set of beliefs. So abandoning belief in God does not really help in the face of it. Okay, then what will?

Second, I believe we need to grasp an empowering hint from the past. Now at this point, I’d like to freely acknowledge that every faith — and we are an interfaith gathering today — every faith has great resources for dealing with suffering and injustice in the world. But as a Christian minister I know my own faith’s resources the best, so let me simply share with you what I’ve got. When people ask the big question, “Why would God allow this or that to happen?” there are almost always two answers. The one answer is: Don’t question God! He has reasons beyond your finite little mind. And therefore, just accept everything. Don’t question. The other answer is: I don’t know what God’s up to — I have no idea at all about why these things are happening. There’s no way to make any sense of it at all.

Now, I’d like to respectfully suggest the first of these answers is too hard and the second is too weak. The second is too weak because, though of course we don’t have the full answer, we do have an idea — an incredibly powerful idea.

One of the great themes of the Hebrew scriptures is that God identifies with the suffering. There are all these great texts that say things like this: If you oppress the poor, you oppress me. I am a husband to the widow. I am father to the fatherless. I think the texts are saying God binds up his heart so closely with suffering people that he interprets any move against them as a move against him. This is powerful stuff! But Christianity says he goes even beyond that. Christians believe that in Jesus, God’s son, divinity became vulnerable to — and involved in — suffering and death! He didn’t come as a general or emperor. He came as a carpenter. He was born in a manger, no room in the inn.

But it is on the cross that we see the ultimate wonder. On the cross we sufferers finally see, to our shock, that God now knows too what it is to lose a loved one in an unjust attack. And so you see what this means? John Stott puts it this way. John Stott wrote, “I could never myself believe in God if it were not for the cross. In the real world of pain, how could one worship a God who was immune to it?” Do you see what this means? Yes, we don’t know the reason God allows evil and suffering to continue, but we know what the reason isn’t, what it can’t be. It can’t be that he doesn’t love us! It can’t be that he doesn’t care. God so loved us and hates suffering that he was willing to come down and get involved in it. And therefore, the cross is an incredibly empowering hint. Okay, it’s only a hint, but if you grasp it, it can transform you. It can give you strength.

And lastly, we have to grasp an empowering hope for the future. In both the Hebrew scriptures and even more explicitly in the Christian scriptures, we have the promise of resurrection. In Daniel 12:2-3 we read, “Multitudes who sleep in the dust of the earth will awake. … [They] … will shine like the brightness of the heavens, and … like the stars forever and ever.” And in John 11 we hear Jesus say, “I am the resurrection and the life.” Now this is what the claim is: That God is not preparing for us merely some ethereal, abstract spiritual existence that is just a kind of compensation for the life we lost. Resurrection means the restoration to us of the life we lost. New heavens and new earth means this body, this world! Our bodies, our homes, our loved ones — restored, returned, perfected and beautified! Given back to us!

In the year after 9/11, I was diagnosed with cancer, and I was treated successfully. But during that whole time, I read about the future resurrection, and that was my real medicine. In the last book of The Lord of the Rings, Sam Gamgee wakes up, thinking everything is lost, and discovering instead that all his friends were around him. He cries out, “Gandalf! I thought you were dead! But then I thought I was dead! Is everything sad going to come untrue?” The answer is Yes. And the answer of the Bible is Yes. If the resurrection is true, then the answer is yes. Everything sad is going to come untrue.

Oh, I know many of you are saying, “I wish I could believe that.” And guess what? This idea is so potent that you can go forward with that. To even want the resurrection, to love the idea of the resurrection, long for the promise of the resurrection even though you are unsure of it, is strengthening. 1 John 3:2-3: “Beloved, now we are children of God and what we will be has not yet been made known. But we know that when he appears we shall be like him, for we shall see him as he is. All who have this hope purify themselves as he is pure.” Even to have a hope in this is purifying.

Listen to how Dostoevsky puts it in Brothers Karamazov: “I believe like a child that suffering will be healed and made up for, that all the humiliating absurdity of human contradictions will vanish like a pitiful mirage, like the despicable fabrication of the impotent and infinitely small Euclidean mind of man, that in the world’s finale, at the moment of eternal harmony, something so precious will come to pass that it will suffice for all hearts, for the comforting of all resentments, of the atonement of all the crimes of humanity, of all the blood that they’ve shed; and it will make it not only possible to forgive but to justify what has happened.”

That is strong and that last sentence is particularly strong … but if the resurrection is true, it’s absolutely right. Amen.

3/22/2015 - We have awarded our first Karina Eide Yound Dyslexic Writers Awards this past week! 23 winners in the categories of Poetry, Fan Fiction, and Other Creative Fiction. In the coming week, we'll be also posting notices regarding the winners of the Courage and Compassion Awards. All of the submissions were amazing. In made our hearts glad to see the works of all these young people and to encourage them in what they continue to do.

We also were contacted by Carolyn Stoebe who told us that her article about Karina is published in the Providence Classical Christian Schools Terra Firma Spring 2015. It was beautifully written and was such a lovely tribute to Karina who had such a wonderful well-lived life.

When I had been reading through some of Karina's voluminous Fan Fictions, I came across this wonderful quote that I'm convinced she was determined to live her life by:

"Live a life without the regret of wishing you did something more. Do everything you can while still have the chance, and yo will never regret your life."

2/12/2015 - We had wonderful submissions for Karina's Young Dyslexic Writers and Courage and Compassion Awards. They made us very happy and we know we're helping do what we know Karina would've done if she had more time - encourage other young writers.

The severe cold is gone and early spring has appeared. The coming of Spring reminds me of the Resurrection and the hope I have of us all be together again.

Karina did so much in her short life, but there's a lot she didn't get to do. But I've been thinking. I would like to live whatever time I have left in her memory as her legacy. As she tackled the day to day patiently and courageously, Karina also tried to live fully for others, a life without regrets. Thinking about living my life for Karina - makes me happy.

12/27/2014 - Yesterday I received a nice note from a fellow ASPS warrior and sister in Christ. She sent us blessings and mentioned her picture of you celebrating your first Christmas in heaven with her daughter Jordanne, and Lindsey, and I thought also Jemisha. We carried on the best we could, sweetie. You are the girl who backed 80 Spritzrengen cookies for her debate club and wrote a warning to us not to eat any more, who baked Swedish cookies with Grandma for hours, played games with everyone one Christmas day, and sang carols and old Christmas favorites around the piano. We miss you so much, heaven is more real than life here without you.

If there's a way, I know you're blessing us here. I know you'd love seeing how Jude is growing up. After Wolterstorff's book, I found Nouwen's Letter of Consolation and I loved this: "When Jesus said that if a grain of wheat dies it will yield a rich harvest, he not only spoke about his own death but indicated the new meaning he would give to our death." I have been thinking deeply about this reflection and more in the letters. "If (your) life was indeed a life lived for us, we must be willing to accept (your) death as a death for us, a death that is not meant to paralyze us, make us totally dependent, or provide an excuse for all sorts of complaints, but a death that should make us stronger, freer, and more mature. To say it even more drastically: we must have the courage to believe that (your) death was good for us and that (you) died so that we might live." It is a crazy radical thought, but even in your DTR this came through.

We are trying our best to step up to bridge the huge chasm that you left - but it's beautiful to see how people are extending their love, doing things they hadn't done before. Krister is trying to enter more of the world and Kirsten and Josh have reach out to them. Lots of inspiration from you, dear girl.

12/19/2014 - Just read Lament for a Son by Nicholas Wolterstoff today. It's a good book. I was glad to see that Nicholas like talking about his son too. It's an awkward thing - I think it's painful for others sometimes to hear because they feel like they don't know what to say or do - but for my part, I so like thinking about her, talking about her, and reading her little love notes to us and stories. I'm just starting to read through her entire Team Tsume story (47 chapters). It's amazing, and I'm only on chapter 5!

I just added a nice quote from Charles Kingsley in the Faith section on this website. These sermons from the past are such a encouragement.

This will be the first Christmas concert at Providence that Karina hasn't attended in maybe 7 years. There will be some of her friends thinking about her, I'm sure.

A few days ago, I had a nice email from a Japanese colleague Ayumi Narita. Ayumi had shared Karina Eide's story on her dyslexia blog http://bit.ly/dyslexia-japan and Ms. Kasano Kon sent a drawing of Karina, saying "Karina chan's smile is so adorable and kawaii!! I hope this drawing gives out the bright and merry side of her (I posted her actual drawing on my Facebook page).
(*´∀｀)

11/27/2014 - Thankful today for the gift that Karina was in my life and our whole family. Karina always filled up this time of year - being the pumpkin pie baker for our family and Swedish cookie maker with her grandma - so her absence is huge. But when I think of so many of our lovely times, I realize how we were so blessed - it's not only the pain of loss now - these a joy also of the memory of these wonderful times.

From Dietrich Bonhoefffer: "how closely our own lives are bound up with other people's and in fact how the center of our own lives is outside ourselves, and how little we are separate entities. The 'as though' it were a part of me' is perfectly true, as I have often felt after hearing that one of my colleagues or pupils ad been killed. I think it is a literal fact of nature that human life extends far beyond our physical presence." I really understand that now.

Recently I found out that Lucy is the name of one of Karina's donor recipients from SightLife (the other is sort of anonymous- maybe just the doctor didn't fill in the form). Coincidence or not - the name of Lucy comes from the word Light - and I know one of Karina's Fan Fictions was with Lucy as a major figure. Lucy is of course is the name of one of the main characters in Chronicles of Narnia. I like the name Lucy - and I am so glad that Karina could gift something to a young woman named Lucy that gave her the gift of sight.

11/9/2014 - I've been doing lots of reading still - more Spurgeon, Rutherford, MacDonald (always), relevant Bible passages, and some new oneslike Charles Kingsley and Lewis Bayely. What treasure trove to have all these learned folk and how the Word stays together through the centuries.

The last few weeks have been difficult. How we long to hear Karina's sweet voice, light touch, and gentle humor. She helped me hand out candy last Halloween. It helps me to read about Heaven.

Carolyn Stoebe is writing an article on Karina for Providence's magazine. It was good to have a chance to tell more Karina stories to her, but also pangs for our loss.

We are trying to do the best we can - Brock and I traveled to Stanford and talked to students and alumni there - and Krister made the big leap of pursuing a bachelor in fine arts from Rocky Mountain College of Art + Design. I'm losing all sense of time in the past. It seemed as if Karina was here just yesterday. All the years seem to be pancaking flat. C.S. Lewis said that grief felt like a constant waiting - and now I understand what that meansI hope that means the years will speed by for us. I know we have more left on earth to fulfill God's plans, but I can't wait for us all to be together again.

Maybe in my next update, I'll share about Karina's donation to SightLife. We got a letter back - for which I am grateful. I know people may have mixed feelings hearing about tissue donation, but it is easier for me because I absolutely know what she would've said if she could give me advice - and that would be to do it. Giving for Karina was like a reflex. It was a sweet letter although still bittersweet. Women in their 20's shouldn't be going blind - so it makes me happy that Karina helped her to see. It was a little full circle. My dad lost is vision before he passed away - and I'm sure he would have been proud of what Karina and we did.

10/8/2014- Neat to hear parents and teachers around the world talking to their students about enter Karina's award contest. : )

Also came across a lovely sermon by Charles Spurgeon on "Precious in the sight of the Lord is the death of his saints." -- Psalm 116:15.

Read it HERE.

10/5/2014- We've official launched Karina's Young Dyslexic Writers and Courage & Compassion Awards. If any of you are following the updates, let me know if you can help spread the word. It's for dyslexic students.

Karina's National Merit Award came in the mail last week. Congratulations, sweetie. You are my hero. I think of Matthew 25:23 'Well done, good and faithful servant! You have been faithful with a few things; I will put you in charge of many things." I'd love to see what you're doing now. Have you seen Christine and Jemisha? How about my dad?

I've been enjoying Glenn Sadler's The letters of George MacDonald. The following rang true to me- "The world will be like a dream to you after this, a constant waiting for something at hand. Your dearest are nearly all out of sight now; but it is not visible proximity buyt love that is the bond, the oneness. Well as you knew him, greatly as you loved him, you will know him better, love him better now."

This is great too... "Do you not find your spirit drawing yet closer to the great heart that has seemed to leave you for a while? I ask this, because I think the law of the spirit is really the law of the universe; that as, when the Lord vanished from the sight of his friends, they found him in their hearts, far nearer then than before, so when any one like him departs, it is but, like him to come nearer in the one spirit of truth and love…"

Thanks, Maggie for this one: "The best moment of a Christian's life is his last one, because it is the one that is nearest heaven. And then it is that he begins to strike the keynote of the song which he shall sing to all eternity. "

-Charles Spurgeon

9/28/2014 - Thinking a lot about Karina today. It was gloomy weather in the morning, but the cleared - with heavy dew on the grass and I thought of how many times we walk together in the summer changing to fall. Thought about heaven and the glimpses we have here on earth and how it must be to see the perfect world free of sin and death. I added a few quotes to the Bonhoeffer pages, but they're great ones.

9/20/2014 - Beautiful day today. Thinking of my girl. Added a little Samuel Rutherford page which I'd like to include in my Little Book of Courage.

9/13/2014 - Things are taking shape with Karina's Writing Award program which we will partner with the prestigious group The Writers Studio in New York. Monica Banks and I are still working on the poster, but it's taking shape. See below.

I've also been working on collecting quotes that have helped me through this period of missing Karina. I really am trying to think of what God could want me to do - and maybe this is something. I've found such inspiration from letters from Samuel Rutherford, George MacDonald, little bits from Jonathan Edwards, and C.S. Lewis.

I actually don't recommend Grief Observed - at least

that book didn't do it for me. It was very dark - and not

what I needed at least. But everyone is different.

Here's my start on my Little Book of Courage.

9/7/2014 - I checked on Karina's visitor stats and was happy to see that she has visitors every day. She would've loved that!
I have been reading so much and bookmarking so many thoughts and reflections of wonderful writers that I've decided to start some encouragement pages from some of things that I've read that might be helpful to other people who are grieving the loss of a daughter or son or some other dear one.

We continue to feel Karina's presence - which is such a blessing. But we do miss her so.

8/31/2014- I figure out how the blog function REALLY works - so now I'm organizing Faith pages the way I should've in the first place. Who knows, maybe I'll collect them together and put them out in an ebook format some day. As I was reading the Letters of Samuel Rutherford, I was struck by his setbacks and crosses - he was a spirit-filled preacher - but then through what seemed to be a curse at the time - he lost his pastorate (politics of sorts) - and thought he would never be able to share his insights from God. But it was because of this deprivation that most of his time was spent writing letters to former parishioners - and these letters were treasured and saved - so that some day people like me in 2014 could discover them and then spread them as he never could have dreamed possible (Ruther lived from 1600-1661).

It's like the first salvo from the Narnia witch - you could despair and give up on the spot - or try to figure out what you can do with even more limited resources. God works through time through different people - and most people don't live to see how they may have impacted and helped others.

From Rutherford: "What is wrath to to her is mercy to you and your house. It is faith's work to claim and challenge loving-kindness out of all the roughtes strokes of God."

8/29/2014 - It's an overcast occasional drizzle drop day here in Edmonds. The koi are happy though. Karina named our koi. I couldn't keep track of their names - so I'm glad I asked her to write them down:

R&B=Red and Black fish
Earl Gray=The gray fish with orange belly and fins
Hikaru=The white fish; the meaning of Hikaru is radiance in Japanese
Akatsuki=The yellow and white fish; the meaning of Akatsuki is Dawn in Japanese
Mai=The orange and white fish; the meaning of Mai is Dance in Japanese

White Fish is now Yuki! It means snow in Japanese. >:D

8/28/2014 - Karina liked playing a game with her friends that involved finding quotes they liked. Here's one that caught my eye. Karina really lived this:

"No one lives forever, but we will be remembered for what we do right now." -Living Louder, The Cab

I also loved this: "Searching quotes up makes me very happy. -nostalgia- It's almost as fun as the first time around!"

8/26/2014 - Missing Karina a lot today. She was such a wonderful person to be with every day. I love her smile and her sunny temperament.

I found a copy of some drawings that we discovered when she was 11 years old. We didn't know when she drew them, but it was after her cancer diagnosis at 10. I posted it at the bottom of the Faith page. She drew several pictures from scary events (one was a big spider) - and then wrote Hebrews: 13:56 Because God said Never will I leave you. I will never forsake you. (I'm so grateful for this)

Reading some of her chats...

Karina: Hi Mom!=D

<3 you Mom!

me: hi sweetie

Karina: hugs you =D

Karina: You can’t wait for inspiration. You have to go after it with a club. Jack London.

This describes me and my writing. But I’ve seem to have lost my club ;o

8/18/2014 - I'm working on rearranging the cancer pages so that the pages topics are easier to find by search engines and reading by clicking through. I'm also going to add move some photos to her photos page. I discovered another nice recording of Karina at home with us - I love hearing her voice and all of her sweet sounds, little jokes, and words of encouragement. One day at a time. Each day it's one day closer to being with Karina again in heaven. She gifted me / us with so much. I'm so thankful she was in our lives.

I added a new section to photos Sweet Drawings, Graphics, and Cards Karina Made for Us. When I get a chance I'll load some of her hand drawn cards. It was something we all looked forward to - seeing what she would draw for us for Mother's Day or our birthdays.

"Our child is gone from us, but we are following after, and I shall hold her yet again to my soul…The only cure for everything is Christ in us."

8/13/2014 - Today I changed around our home page (I'm starting to work on some of the other program sites) and moved Maggie's letter to Karina to the Faith pages - in addition to adding links to the other blog posts I had writing on C.S. Lewis' Writings about Cancer, Sovereignty, Sanctification, Suffering, and Joy, and Heaven.

I've been reading through George MacDonald's fairy tales and I feel enchanted just like C.S. Lewis did. I listened to a recording of Karina reading one of her stories and it did my heart so good. I love hearing her voice.

But I am also conscious of having to do whatever duty God places before me. Some more GM wisdom: "To try to be brave is to be brave." and “You would not think any duty small, if you yourself were great.” Whoa- that is a lot to live up to.

Well, I'd like to start. We so love the idea of honoring Karina's passion for writing and helping others, and if we're successful, it could be such a blessing. Writing is so difficult for many young students with dyslexia - but most of them are such wonderful storytellers, that we loved the idea of giving them more incentive and recognition for their talents. We have many friends at different schools, so we hope that they will help us spread the word - and really encourage more kids to write.

8/5/2014 -

I've been reading through George MacDonald. This quote reminded me of Karina: “I watched her departure, as one watches a sunset. She went like a radiance through the dark wood, which was henceforth bright to me, from simply knowing that such a creature was in it.”

We're starting to brainstorm about the program in Karina's name and honor. It's still pretty early, but I loved chatting with Brock and Monica Banks, Phil Schultz's wife. She co-runs the Writer's Studio and was helping me think through what might work for dyslexic students and writing. It still might change a lot, but we're thinking of something like Karina Eide Program of Excellence - and having it consist of 2 parts: #1. a contest for dyslexic writers, and #2. a leadership program. The writing contest is open from children age 6 until 17. Length can be a short as 6 words (e.g. haiku) and as long as 600. We're thinking 3 genres: 1. Fan Fiction (any), 2. Any Original, Prose and 3. Poetry.

7/28/2014 - Summer time was always a great time for Karina. We would walk Teka almost every evening after dinner and during the day, we'd all sit together on the back patio working at our laptops and watching the fish. It's a tradition in our house for Krister and Karina to draw us cards on our birthday. Here's a card that Karina drew for me based on our stained glass window that became the logo for our clinic:

7/8/2014 - I've read through Letters from Boenhoffer and now Letters from Samuel Rutherford. I've always liked reading through letters ever since reading through all 3 volumes of C.S. Lewis'. Today I came to this wonderful letter Rutherford had written to a pastor who just lost his son:

Reverend and dear brother,

Your home is like the house of which you are a branch: the cross is the rent paid for the life of each person in the house.

I would like to suffer with you if doing so would give you some relief from the trial you are now facing.

My first thought is that you have spoken of how we should respond to trials long before me, yes, before I even knew God.

You know well that He is the Sovereign Lord; He can freely decide to pick a rose or an apple from His garden whenever He wishes. It is not for gardeners like us to decide; the decision belongs to him.

We have learned and have even taught others to know and to celebrate the Lordship which He exercises over all of us, always in a most merciful way, for that is His character.

It is not far-fetched to say that your son has only been moved to another place in the garden, a place where there is more sunlight, and where he will thrive better than previously.

You must think of your son’s departure in this way: the lease you had on him is over and he must return to the one who leased him to you.

Return the boy, that he might bring Him pleasure. Think of your present situation as a college to teach you much of grace.

I know you are such a friend of Christ that when He is a guest in your home you will gladly let Him give and take from you. You know that you have said often to Him that he may take anything of yours, no matter how dear it is to you.

As for me, I am convinced He has not taken without giving, that He has, in some way we do not yet comprehend, made you richer.

I am convinced also that He, knowing you must go through rough waters, has removed from you some burdens so that you may walk more easily on the road which leads to glory. This is how it is as our journey progresses towards our final destination.

In time you will see that this trauma you are enduring will give you a deeper insight into God than any commentary, ancient or modern.

Read this and know it is true: He knows what He is doing.

He is only pruning a fruitful tree, so that it may be more fruitful. I wish you Godspeed as you enter this new chapter in your life.

Be of good courage. Something of yours is now in heaven, in addition to the Saviour Himself who waits to welcome you.

It may seem like a long time before you get there, but it isn't.

He will do what He has promised. With or without afflictions, you must grow, fill your shell, live for Him and be more than a conqueror. He will make you a sharer in his victory.

I feel like I am telling you what you already know; I feel like I am taking water to the well. I know I am speaking to one who knows better than I the mysteries of our faith and of how God works and walks with us.

I speak these things only because of my love and concern for you.

Do give my regards to your family, and pray for me; be assured that I will pray consistently for you.

Grace be with you.
Yours, in his sweet Lord Jesus,

Samuel Rutherford

6/27/2014 - Brock, Krister, and I are doing OK. We miss Karina terribly. We just keep expecting to she her, she was so much a part of our lives. Our latest news is that we came back from California where the Clearity Foundation was honoring Karina's and our family's contribution to that non-profit's work with molecular profiling of stage IV cancers (they focus on ovarian, although Karina's was ASPS or alveolar soft part sarcoma).

I gave a little talk to the professionals there that you can read HERE.

Today Maggie shared a wonderful quote by Dietrich Bonhoeffer:

“There is nothing that can replace the absence of someone dear to us, and one should not even attempt to do so. One must simply hold out and endure it. At first that sounds very hard, but at the same time it is also a great comfort. For to the extent the emptiness truly remains unfilled one remains connected to the other person through it. It is wrong to say that God fills the emptiness. God in no way fills it but much more leaves it precisely unfilled and thus helps us preserve -- even in pain -- the authentic relationship. Further more, the more beautiful and full the remembrances, the more difficult the separation. But gratitude transforms the torment of memory into silent joy. One bears what was lovely in the past not as a thorn but as a precious gift deep within, a hidden treasure of which one can always be certain.” - Dietrich Bonhoeffer