Happy 4th of July!

A day in advance, since I probably won't be online tomorrow. I got so many cute photos of the girls in their patriotic dresses after church yesterday that it's going to be hard to narrow it down to ones to use in a layout. I think these 3 are my favorites.

Sometime this week the Deac will have a needle stuck into his chest to withdraw material from his lung for a biopsy. Pending the results of that, he may then undergo a PET scan to further characterize what we are dealing with here.

I think to me the worst part is not knowing what we are dealing with. It is like we are treading water and waiting for someone to throw us a life preserver. Only the people on the shore (i.e. the different doctors) are debating over which life preserver to send out. It's exhausting and we hope the life preserver will come sooner rather than later.

Last week our priest gave the Deac some oil from the tomb of the Mother of God (Greek: Theotokos) to annoint himself with for 40 days. Each night before he annoints himself, we pray the Akathist together. This has been lovely mostly because it's good to make an effort to pray together again - we had become lax about that. But also, I've been wanting to learn the music to the Akathist hymn and learn to sing it for quite some time now. Doing it every night gives me the opportunity to learn to sing the refrains and it's really a beautiful hymn.

Anyway, there is a part in the Akathist which seems significant to me in our present circumstances - where the Theotokos is referred to with the following allegory:

• Raft for those who desire to be saved.
• Haven for those who fare on the sea of life.

So the point may be that instead of relying soley on doctors to send us our life preserver as we tread water here, we should also be sure to rely the care of the holy Mother of God. It certainly can't hurt to entreat her for prayers. It's nice to have more than one option on the path to healing and wholeness. Besides, it's probably because of her support that we're still treading along above water at all.