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Leaves from the Vine

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In one of my favorite TV shows, there’s a character in it named Uncle Iroh. In a specific episode, it depicts Uncle Iroh going throughout his day serving other people, including a moment where he sings a song called “Leaves From the Vine” in order to comfort a distressed child. For the past few weeks, I have been in the hospital in Boston with Samuel, on the other side of the country, while the doctors attempt (again) to get his seizures under control. While there, we had our own person like “Uncle Iroh,” who helped comfort us during our time of distress in the hospital far away from home. Because we spent Father’s Day in the hospital, my family observed it last night where they gave me a gift. A clamshell music box that played that special song “Leaves From the Vine” that Uncle Iroh sang to that child in distress.  Though small and unassuming, when I heard the music box play, I wept. As we continue to watch our Samuel decline, and as I opened that small gift, I thought about the e...
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Good things Go

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  The family with Samuel in the hospital after surgery      The other day I was listening to a song by Linkin Park and began to weep at a lyric: “Sometimes bad things take the place where good things go.”     It’s been a while since my last post. Over the past year, we’ve watched Samuel continue to decline. We’ve spent literal months in the hospital and had brief moments of hope, only to have them dashed again by despair.    While we continue to fight for our son every day, we recognize it’s a ticking clock we are fighting against.      Our most recent hospital trip was to the operating room so Samuel could get a feeding tube surgically inserted into his stomach. This feeding tube is necessary because he no longer has the capability of ingesting enough nutrition or medicine orally, and therefore is entirely reliant on the tube for sustenance.      Before we went to the hospital to have this surgery done, my wife laid ...
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A Miracle for My Samuel

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Every week on Wednesdays I take one of my children on a date. This week, my 5-year-old daughter Lauren and I decided to go see the movie “The King of Kings” in theaters. As we watched the show, I couldn’t stop thinking about my Samuel.    The movie depicted the life and ministry of Jesus. He made a blind man see, a lame man walk, helped the deaf to hear and even raised a man from the dead.    I saw these miracles and couldn’t help but wonder where the miracle was for MY son? As the show went on, it showed Jesus praying in Gethsemane, being tortured, and inevitably being killed on the cross. It showed His mother Mary watching as he died.    As I saw this mother watching her son die, I wept as I thought about my perfect son, and the slow decline we’ve had to helplessly stand by and watch. Many years ago, my wife and I had the opportunity of going to Jerusalem and visiting all the places Jesus walked. We saw where he was born, where he was raised, where he tau...
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The Silent Battle of our Soul

  A few days ago, my three-year-old asked for some fruit.   I willingly gave him one piece of fruit; however, he was not content with one piece.   I denied him any additional fruit, and immediately a battle started.   He was bitter and resentful, and threw a tantrum before me. He yelled at me that one piece of fruit wasn’t enough.   He wanted more.   What should have been a piece of fruit he received with joy and gratitude turned into something full of bitterness and resentment, and for a while afterward, he was angry at me, his father, for only giving him one piece of fruit instead of more. Any parent of a toddler has been in this situation before.   Toddlers are wonderful, but they lack their parents’ foresight, and they often start a battle over things their parents can see are in their best interest. Last week Samuel had a few days where he was completely cognitive again.   I could see that the fog had lifted from his mind, and we got to h...
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How do you Spell Hallelujah

One of the most famous musical masterpieces ever written is Handel’s Messiah, with the most famous portion of it being the Hallelujah chorus.  Sang in triumph and victory, they repeat the word Hallelujah over and over. It makes sense that this word would be sung in triumph, given that the definition of Hallelujah is “God be Praised.” For Christmas this year, we watched the movie “It’s a Wonderful Life” as a family.  This classic film follows the story of George Bailey, a man who thought he had hit rock bottom because of all the bad things that had happened to him over the years, he often comments in despair over the cold and broken home he lives in.  He seemingly faced disappointment after disappointment. While the pain and stress of his situation is raining down on him, George’s son asks “Dad, how do you spell Hallelujah?” There have been times in my life where I’ve looked at my cold and broken life, and have been frustrated by my perceived misfortunes.  A few years...
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The Promised Joy

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  In one of my favorite scriptures, it says “Weeping may endure for a night…” Recently, our four kids all attended swim class.   This is something they do on a weekly basis, and each week they get an assessment of what level out of ten they are in their swim lessons.   Jonathan, my seven-year-old, moved up from level 8 to level 9.   Lauren, my five-year-old, moved up from level 7 to level 8.   Even Andrew, my two-year-old, is progressing really well.   After Samuel’s assessment, he moved from a level 4 down to level 3. That night, I wept. This was yet another moment of grief for us, as we watch our son’s constant seizures cause decline in his abilities.   Each week we witness more examples of his decline, and each week we have to go through the grieving process once again as his seizures slowly get worse and worse.                 The following morning, we went to a fa...
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Samuel’s Sunday Sermon

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When Jesus was on the Earth, his disciples asked him “How can we know the way?”       Every week, instead of attending Sunday school classes, Samuel takes me to each picture of Jesus throughout our church building and describes those pictures to me. He’ll say things like “Jesus is blessing his disciple!” Or “Jesus is getting baptized!” This is my favorite thing I get to do every week, however, it means I don’t get to attend some great Sunday school classes, all teaching sermons on kindness or love, or obedience.      This week, we walked by a group of adults talking in the hallway, when Samuel stopped to point to a picture of Jesus. As he did so, all the adults stopped speaking and turned toward my son. Samuel, in his cherubic voice, pointed to a simple portrait of Jesus, and said “Just Jesus.” One of the adults looked at Samuel and said “all we need is Jesus?” Samuel gave them all a thumbs up and said “that’s right!” Then he walked through the crowd ...
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