Prayer calendar

I've been working on getting a prayer calendar together that will import to my smart phone. I've finally got this one on my Google calendar and thought I'd share the link in case it could help anyone else.




The link for XML (feed readers) is here and iCal is here and the link to view it in HTML in a web browser is here.

When I get together my prayer calendar for Dennis, I'll post it here, too.

Pruning and being pruned

At our new house, we inherited a very old (30-40 years old), very large, VERY overgrown grape vine.

After watching about a thousand (more or less) YouTube videos on pruning, I attacked the vine today. First, I started by taking out the very obvious dead growth, then I started cutting back on those vines with questionable vitality. I cut until I found live wood, then cut back per my instructional videos.

We ended up with a fairly scraggly vine. I would not be surprised if it does not bear fruit this year, though my mother tells me it is entirely possible that it will. But, hopefully, in a few years, we will have a good crop of grapes.

The entire time I was cutting, I was thinking about the vine illustrations in the New Testament. I know regular gardeners are well aware of this, but pruning is sometimes a fairly drastic action. A whole lot of our vine had to be cut away to reveal life. I find that so often in my spiritual life, I balk at taking the drastic steps that cut away death to reveal a place where new life can occur. But, obviously, that is what is necessary sometimes.

The other thing that occurred to me is that growth is not necessarily a gauge of health. Last summer and early fall, our grape vine was full of green, hard fruit. But the sun couldn't reach much of it, and a lot of the grapes did not develop well because so many vines were pulling energy away from the fruit. Further, the growth on some vines, covered up dead wood and, from a bit of a distance, made everything look quite lush. I thought about the many churches where numerical growth is held up as an indicator of health, while energy-sapping offshoots flourish, death/disease goes unchecked, and individuals are not challenged to grow fully.

I guess I have always known that being pruned is a rather painful process. But until I was cutting away the excess myself, I didn't understand just how much of myself really needs to be pruned.

Recovering

We all got sick here this week. Annalivia got the flu on Saturday evening. Daniel threw up on Tuesday. Emmeliese got sick Wednesday afternoon and I got it Wednesday night. We're all praying it will miss Daddy.

The four of us without a paying job have been inside since Saturday. Today, it was sunny and 32 degrees out, so we all got on our slippers and walked out to the front porch where the sun was shining. We came in when we were cold five minutes later. It was a good breather.

We are all in varying stages of recovery. I have a headache. Emmeliese is fussy and frustrated by everything. Daniel and Annalivia are both eating regular food now, but Daniel is getting very tired (and hence, fussy) in the afternoon.

BUT -- in the midst of this, as I was praying at some point for healing for a child, I realized that I really do take for granted the other 360 days in a year when we are all healthy beyond most of the world's populations' imagining. There are so many for whom that ratio works the other way. May I be mindful...

My friends' new children

My friends who have been looking for their Haitian adoptees, are headed to O'Hare tonight to fly to Pittsburgh where they will meet a 12 year old girl and a 9 year old boy sibling pair from Haiti's BRESMA orphanage. These children will be theirs in the near future -- a permanent part of their family that includes my friends' birth children, a 10 year old boy and 7 year old girl.

If Wendy and Josiana are found, they, too, will join my friend's family. I know that even though she never thought of herself as a mother-of-many, she is PRAYING, PRAYING, PRAYING that will be the case.

I am, too.

Not back to normal

We had dinner at my parent's tonight. I thought about children with no food, incomplete families in mourning, people without shelter. I just do not understand going about business as normal right now. Seriously. If you are someone who has managed to be largely unaffected by this crisis in Haiti, can you please tell me how you've managed that?

In the meantime I want to share some links I've encountered and I'm going to apologize to the Deputy Headmistress for largely plagiarizing her post. Go there if you want to see the links with her eloquent verbage.

First, a blog by a Global Ministries (Disciples of Christ-related) missionaries.

Blog entries from a World Vision employee on the ground.

More info from The Haiti Rescue Center.

A story on Haiti rescues, including the rescue of a three-year old boy.

A missionary family living and serving in Haiti whose home has become a hospital.

A blog by a nutritionist who works with a foundation promoting health in Haiti.

Contact those representatives again PLEASE!!

From the For His Glory website...

We need you all to act again on behalf of all our children. Currently, we have two families from Argentina and one from Canada adopting. Our governments are not cooperating and working together to get all our kids out, they are dragging their feet. We are going to start losing babies due to dehydration if we do not evacuate these children quickly to the U.S. and then process them here. We do not have time for a one by one assessment of the state of their adoption process and issuance of visas prior to evacuation.

Please, begin contacting your governors and continue to pressure your senators and congressmen to get a plan in place, quickly, to evacuate the children to the U.S. The Argentinean and Canadian Governments could then work with the U.S. to bring their children home from the U.S. Time is of the essence. This is not going to look good for the U.S. , the State Department, the other world governments or the United Nations if our children, who survived the earthquake, begin to perish because the governments and agencies would not work together to quickly evacuate all the children in the orphanages.

This needs to be a united effort. PLEASE CALL YOUR GOVERNORS, SENATORS AND CONGRESSMEN AS SOON AS YOU RECEIVE THIS MESSAGE.

We have confirmed reports that Governor Ed Rendell form Pennsylvania went to Haiti and has brought back 54 children to Pennsylvania from an orphanage. If this can happen for them, it needs to happen for all the orphans that are suffering in orphanages with little supplies, starting to experience diarrhea and sicknesses due to the conditions.

PLEASE ACT NOW ON BEHALF OF OUR BABIES AND CHILDREN.

Thank you,

Kim Harmon,President

____________________

If you feel like you can't come up with a letter, here's the one I composed and sent in about a minute and a half. Feel free to use it. PLEASE take the brief amount of time required to do this.

Dear Representative ______,

I am writing to you concerning the aftermath of the earthquake in Haiti and the humanitarian crisis developing there.
As you probably know, thousands of Haitians are orphans housed in various orphanages throughout the country. Many of these children are in the process of being adopted by families in the US and other countries.
Sir, these children need visas NOW in order to come to the US. The situation is such that the children cannot wait to be evaluated on a case-by-case basis. They need medical assistance.
I ask you now to do what you can to grant children temporary visas and bring them to the US, even if it is possible that they will be sent to families in other countries later. Here, they can receive medical treatment and have basic needs met. In Haiti, they simply will not have that chance.
Please act quickly and urgently on behalf of these children.
Thank you,

Joy and heartbreak at the same time

The kids from the BRESMA orphanage have gotten out. God bless the Pennsylvania governor who went and got them. My friends received word that 54 children were on the plane -- everyone but their two.

I continue to pray...

More on Haiti... and perspective

A friend from college is adopting a sibling set, Wendy and Josiana, from Haiti from the BRESMA orphanage featured on CNN, etc. When the earthquake occurred, the birth parents of Wendy and Josiana, came to the orphanage and took their children because they feared for their lives. These parents are loving parents who gave up their children only when they were certain adoption by others was possible; they love them very, very much. They thought they were helping but they didn't know that help was on the way. Now those parents, with no money, resources, etc. are trying to provide for their children while the orphanage DOES have resources, food, water...

It's a heartbreaking situation.

I've been thinking about Haiti a lot in the last week. Yesterday, at church, I felt the weight of the tragedy throughout the entire service. When I got home, Dennis and I had a very frank discussion about where we are, where we've been, and where we are going as a family.

I have always been one of those people who is fascinated by trends, to a certain extent. I'm going to blame it on growing up during the Coca-cola sweatshirts/ jeans-with-a-triangle-on-the-rear late 80's/ early 90's, but my desire to keep-up-with-the-Jones' is deeper than that. I have found myself too fascinated by Pottery Barn and Anthropologie stores, too enthralled with decorating shows, too taken with the idea of making more visually perfect that which we have...

I'm breaking free from that thinking. We don't have cable tv, so I never watch decorating shows anymore, but I replaced some of that with some blogs that tend to focus on making things more and more pretty. I get that; I do. But when a tragedy like an earthquake that, for all intents and purposes, has debilitated an entire nation occurs and one is reminded that a thousand tragedies, perhaps not of this scope, but of real importance occur every day, well, making a pretty tassel for one's lamp seems so... unimportant.

I am trying not to judge others, though I confess I don't understand how this loss of life cannot be affecting everyone in some significant way. I am judging myself primarily. I think Dennis and I have been realizing over the past few months that we have choices to make in this life, and deliberations to process, and how act on those deliberations will determine how we and our children see this gift of life. We want them to know that while God blesses us with resources that allow us to live a beautiful life, we also have a profound responsibility to His kingdom. The fact is, the resources He's given us can also allow others to live a more beautiful life, sometimes just by the fact that they HAVE life.

I'm curious if others are feeling or have felt a similar nudge in the past few days? Or perhaps at another time?

Something you CAN do NOW for Haiti

I am reposting an email I received from a friend today. This is something YOU can do that would make a difference for Haiti. Please consider reposting this on your blog or facebook (you can create a note with the info and direct your facebook friends to it in your status update). We really CAN make a difference! Thanks! ~April

---------------------

A quick recap: My wife Cathy was in Haiti when the earthquake hit. Traveling with a mission group from the Carmelite Community of the Word from the Altoona-Johnstown Catholic Diocese, they were in a small village about 50 miles north of Port-au-Prince. No one the group was hurt and they are now in the Dominican Republic awaiting a flight this afternoon to Miami. In addition, our daughter and her husband are in the process of adopting two children (Wendy & Josiana--brother and sister) from Haiti. The two children are in an orphanage in Port-au-Prince. Fortunately, no one in the orphanage was hurt in the earthquake, but now they are threatened with a severe lack of drinking water and food.

Beyond for sending money to one of the relief agencies, there is little we can do as individuals to help. EXCEPT...

Like Wendy and Josiana, there are hundreds of Haitian orphans who are awaiting final approval for adoptions to families in the U.S. The building in Haiti where the adoptions are processed was destroyed in the earthquake. It may be years before the processing can resume.

However, the U.S. can grant temporary visas to all orphans whose adoptions were pending before the earthquake. With the grant of visas the oprhans could then come to the U.S. to live with their adoptive families, but be classified as "foster care" children until the final paperwork is completed. In granting the visas, the evacuation of the hundreds of orphans stuck in this limbo will free space in Haitian orphanages for the thousands of new orphans that have been created by this emergency. Please note that under U.S. rules, any family that applies to adopt a foreign child must first be certified as a foster care family, so there is a safe-guard system in place to insure that these oprhans who would come here under this plan will be safe.

PLEASE, PLEASE. Contact your U.S. Senators asking that they put pressure on the United States Citizenship and Immigrantion Service (USCIS) to grant "temporary visas" to all Haitian orphans now in orphanges awaiting the completion of their adoption process.

This is a real way to help and it will cost nothing. You can send Emails by going to the website for the United States Senate (http://www.senate.gov/) and finding the links to your two senators' websites.

If you have contacts or friends in any agency of the U.S. government who could push this idea with USCIS, please reach out to them to help, too.

Thank all of you for your concerns, good thoughts and most of all prayers for my family these past few days. ~Ed

On Haiti

Amidst a baby crawling happily after her brother and his crane truck and a big sister still in her nightgown because it's "more like a princess" and a warm, steady house and more food, clothing, water, resources than we really, ever need, my thoughts are consumed by Haiti and the magnitude of need there following the earthquake.

From an article at World's site...
"about 1.2 million of Haiti’s 8.5 million residents are orphans. Only 200,000 of those live in orphanages. The rest live in the streets, and may not be accounted for weeks, or ever."

Here's the list World compiled of organizations who have resources on the ground now and are able to get immediate assistance to Haitians.

American Bible Society
American Red Cross (or text “HAITI” to 90999 to donate $10)
Children’s Hunger Fund
Christian Aid
Christian Reformed World Relief Committee
Food for the Hungry
Mennonite Central Committee
Operation Blessing International
Samaritan's Purse
World Relief
World Vision

And my lovely friend, Holly, referred readers to Real Hope for Haiti. The blog for their rescue center is here.

Praying, praying, praying...

On blog honesty

One of the things that has been holding me back from blogging is a struggle with what is and is not honest. Sometimes I feel as though I'm representing only part of myself when I blog. On the other hand, I am learning that not every thought that pops into my head, even those that stay there ruminating for a while, need to be shared with every. single. person. Where's the balance? I'm not sure I know.

What I do know is that I've felt as though I've only represented what-I've-wanted-y'all-to-think about me in the past. My great fear in life has always been disappointing people I love. I've made a lot of mistakes in life because of the need for approval from others. But transparency is becoming essential to me, I think. I don't want to present an air-brushed picture of myself taken through a Vaselined lens. What-I-want-you-to- think doesn't take into account the mercies God is showing me in revealing my brokenness. And that's probably pretty much all that's worth sharing on a blog at this point.

Anyway, in an attempt to clear up some misconceptions that I think I've perpetuated, judging by past comments or emails to me, I'll have a little out-ing here and post a list of 25 things about me, as inspired by a list I posted on facebook. There are not the 25 most important things about me, nor are they 25 things that will never change. But they are honest and that's why they are here, now.

25 Non-random things about the author of this blog

1. I love, love, love living in my hometown. I don't care if that is not cosmopolitan or evolved or sophisticated or anything else. I think this place is amazing and thank God every day that I live here again.

2. I'm really excited to have a house of my own, but I constantly fight a desire to make it bigger and better. When my husband lost his job recently, I realized that I could let go of the house very, very easily if it meant having him and the kids. That helps put Victorian-style fainting couches into perspective.

3. The fact that my parents are still married after almost 35 years of marriage is amazing and one of the most inspiring things I've ever experienced. They have not had an easy road, by a long shot, but their story is full of such grace and mercy and forgiveness and learning and growing that continues to unfold. I am so, so, SO thankful that they've made the difficult choice again and again throughout their lives.

4. I love that my husband knows how to do almost everything. I always thought that would annoy me in a spouse, but it doesn't. I love when he's more right that I am. Competency is so virile. And confidence and humility are a powerful combination in a husband.

5. We got together on Ash Wednesday, Mar. 5. I knew without a doubt by Sunday evening that I wanted to marry him. We got engaged on May 4 and married on July 4. It seemed like it took FOREVER.

6. One of my favorite memories from our wedding was when my friends and family, including my 80-year old grandmother, surrounded us and swayed back and forth while holding up candles while we danced to the KISS song, "Forever", which is one of Dennis' faves. My Grammy rocked that song.

7. I think my grandfather is one of the greatest human beings ever born and I miss my Grammy almost every day.

8. I've learned to be a better parent thanks to Keith Lehman, Scott Turansky and JoAnne Miller, Gary Chapman and James Dobson. And Elizabeth Kreuger and maybe even Michael Pearl. Yes, you read that list right.

9. Watching Annalivia being born was probably the most profound and amazing moment of my life. When Daniel was born, I was too exhausted from the 43 hours of labor to properly appreciate the profundity.

10. I think God is breaking me open through my children. This is one reason, among many, that Dennis and I are loathe to limit our family size to what I can conceive physically, emotionally, spiritually, intellectually, etc.

11. I wonder when I share some particular parenting triumph whether I should also disclose the approximately 4.8 billion parenting failures that occurred in the days, hours, minutes and seconds previous to that.

12. My sisters are seriously the coolest human beings on the planet and are my absolute best friends. I adore them.

13. One of my favorite programs ever was "Sir Norbert Smith: A Life!" shown on Masterpiece Theatre here when I was in high school. That and Black Adder pretty much made my sophomore year of high school and began a long, constant and current love affair with English comedies. And dramas. And movies. And books.

14. I can still quote Sir Norbert.

15. I was a pastor for 7 years to a congregation I really loved. But I do not miss being a pastor. Now I am in my hometown as a lay person, of sorts, trying to figure out how to worship in my home church, or not, without wounding people I really love and destroying the vocation God provided me.

16. I love liturgy. I love the pipe organ. I love high church trappings. I love a rockin' band. I love slightly awkward worship-leading praise music. I love spontaneous prayer. I love a humble man leading a congregation in worship, prayer, and teaching. I love a humble woman leading worship, prayer, and teaching. It's when worship, music, pastoring, praying, preaching etc. becomes something to prove or anything other than real and authentic and honest and true that I feel sort of sickened when I encounter it.

17. When I was in seminary, I won an award for constructing a very tight, terribly consistent theology. I now believe that well-constructed, tight and terribly consistent theologies are generally not based in any real God experiences.

18. I have found myself at a point where I can listen to a wide, broad, divergent spectrum of theology -- almost anything, in fact -- and find something of meaning and help to me.

19. I totally love Jesus now. It only took 5 years of ministry for me to have my "kitchen conversion." Before that, I loved people and the church more than Jesus. But people fail, and I realized that I wasn't going to be able to go on in ministry or life without loving, seeking, and knowing the Spirit of the Living God above all else.

20. I've finally learned that there is absolutely no substitute for the presence and power of Christ found in reading, studying, sharing, preaching, teaching and listening to the Bible. Living Water, Bread of Life... I understand those labels now. Finally.

21. My life completely and totally changed due to the events of Sept. 19, 2006 when Dennis and I, and Daniel who was at 18 weeks gestation, survived a major car accident.

22. I became sort of rabidly pro-life after the accident after being sort of rabidly pro-choice before it. Almost everything, politically, changed for me from there. I once was a self-described "flaming liberal." I also hadn't done much thinking. I now consider myself conservative in almost every way, except when it comes tothe gays. I love me some gays.

23. I spend approximately 90% of my time thinking about faith, spiritual disciplines, the church, practical theology, Christian parenting and what to eat next.

24. I have a problem with sarcasm and really am trying not to be ascerbic or condescending or vicious, both in thought and in deed. It's hard.

25. I also struggle with anger, gluttony, sloth, greed, and pride. Oh, and envy. But not so much with lust. So I guess there's hope for me yet. :)

Pregnancy and Infant Loss Remembrance Day

Today is Pregnancy and Infant Loss Remembrance Day. In recent years some good friends of mine have suffered the loss of their children and I cannot imagine the pain associated with such grief. I know there are many more parents who suffer the loss of children than we are aware in our advanced medical times. Today, I offer a prayer on their behalf. If you would like to learn more about this day, please visit the official site of Pregnancy and Infant Loss Remembrance Day here.

Significance

For some reason, the seventh anniversary of the Sept. 11 attacks struck me in a profound way this year. I'm not entirely sure why, except that last year, I was having bone graft surgery and the year before officiating my great-uncle's funeral and finding out that the baby I was carrying who turned out to be Daniel had a high risk for a genetic disease. My mind was elsewhere. This year, I've had some time to think about Sept. 11.

Today, I drove up to Rock Falls to officiate a funeral and got to spend lots of time listening to NPR and thinking about the past seven years. I arrived at my church in July before the Sept. 11 attacks. After the second tower collapsed, I went to work and spent the late morning and early afternoon calling people to let them know we were having an impromptu prayer service. I remember very clearly trying to put some words to the shock all of us were feeling and failing miserably. Luckily, everyone else was also failing miserably at processing it all. At least we could fail miserably together.

Remembering that day now, I see the events through the lens of a wife and parent, and my heart feels broken in new ways. And today, again, I fail miserably at putting words to my thoughts. I have a feeling I'm not the only one. So if you still fail miserably at being able to process all that happened and has happened since then, know I'm sitting in solidarity with you tonight. At least we're failing miserably together.

Life moves

And we can either enter into the journey of our own accord, or be pulled along unwillingly.

A prayer for this season of life, found somewhere online, sometime in the past...

Jesus of the road, Jesus of the street
Jesus of the sky, Jesus on the beat
May I come with you, along your roads today
and see where you are, and what you do and say
and be involved, in some small way?
May I do it, Jesus?
In your name I pray.

Little D update

Our little guy is still sick. He's not drinking anything on his own. Dennis and I have been feeding him dropperfuls of Pedialyte and got about 16 ounces in him this afternoon. He fights it, but at least it is staying down. Today we were headed to the emergency room for dehydration when we got a call from the doctor's office. Turns out Daniel has a parasite. Right now, we have no medication for it and the treatment was going to be an IV fluid push, which we have been doing without the needle here at home. We have been bouncing between medical care providers as we've been figuring this illness out -- our doctor was full, then we actually saw our doctor, then our doctor was off, then our urgent care physician weighed in. It's been frustrating.

Tomorrow, our doctor should be in and able to help, I pray. In the meantime, I visited the health food store and got a natural remedy that I am also praying will help. If the little guy would just drink, I would be much less worried. But he won't. Or doesn't. And I'm getting a little freaked out.

Back home

I have returned home from a brief trip to Eureka and my alma mater where we were celebrating Alumni Weekend. "Weekend" is a misnomer. It's actually an afternoon and evening. But I suppose Alumni Weekend sounds better than Alumni 8-hour Event.

I am on the alumni board of my college, so I was sort of required to be there, but I wanted to be there also. Friends of mine, T and his wife, were receiving the Outstanding Young Alumni award. I was happy to see that because I nominated them! T and his wife began a charitable foundation in the name and memory of their daughters who died at birth. Their foundation has been around about three years and has donated about $30,000 to our state Children's Hospital and also to the obstetric unit in their own city. Through tears, T told us the story of the foundation and related it back to the ethos of the college which seems to be, in short, "go from here and do something to make this world a better place." It was a great, moving celebration of how they have lived since college and I was really, really proud of him and really very proud to be his friend.

The day itself was beautiful, too. I stayed at Grammy and Gramps' last night and slept in this morning. As my grandmother said, "A mother needs a night of good sleep away from her children every once in a while." She was right. I truly enjoyed the day. The weather was warm, but breezy and the college was in its most beautiful state -- lilacs and flowers blooming, trees and grass green and lush, red brick buildings stately and welcoming as always. I walked around and visited new features -- a graduation brick pathway -- a labyrinth -- I've not visited. I walked the campus and remembered racing around the tall oaks that used to fill the area when Roo and I were little and spent some time driving around town, seeing many people out and about enjoying the day.

And I felt myself really longing for it all. My hometown is part of me in a way I just can't fill elsewhere. Perhaps it is because generations of my family have lived there. Perhaps it's because I can't let go. Whatever it is -- I feel at home there in a way no place else has fulfilled.

So though I returned home to my family tonight, I feel like I also came back to my regular sojourn. And into it, out of this lovely and renewing weekend, I bring the powerful feeling of being back home.

Please go read this

Have you read Ann V's beautiful Mother's Day reflection? If you have borne a child, or are with child, or have lost a child, or long for a child, please, please, please read her words.

Wow.

Praying for NIU

I know many have heard about the shootings at Northern Illinois University. NIU is about 50 miles from us. Lots of high school graduates in this area choose NIU as their school. Our area, and many of the communities around us are powerfully affected by this tragedy. Please pray.

Aching

Tonight, the neice of one of my congregants is delivering her still-born baby. She has lost two babies at 20 weeks, also.

She is a very young woman, unmarried. She and her family do not have a church home. I am lined-up to do a funeral and on call this evening when she delivers.

I cannot imagine this grief.

Please pray for her and her family that they know whatever comfort they can receive.

Mother Theresa's Crisis Practice of Faith

I don't know if others have already blogged about this, but I recently read this article in our Time magazine about a new book that will reveal letters written by Mother Teresa over a 66-year period. Teresa requested that these letters be destroyed, but the Vatican decided against her wishes and published them in book form.

Apparently, in these letters, she writes to several confessors/ spiritual directors about her inability to sense the presence of God, or hear God's voice. She is able to see God's work, but feels as though God is removed and far from her. At some points she even voices her terrifying doubt that God is there, though she quickly apologizes for her "unbelief."

Despite the fact that Teresa's wishes were ignored, which is somewhat troubling, I think, I'm glad that these letters are published. Mother Teresa is arguably the most well-known servant of Christ in the world. To find that she was someone who struggled in ways familiar to most of us, yet still did extraordinary things will be helpful to many, I think.

Of course, as the article mentions and recent letters to Time following the publication of the article demonstrate, those who wish to disprove the existence of God quickly latch on to Mother Teresa's seeking and distress. They find it hypocritical that she would profess the joy of Christ even while not feeling it herself.

But, for Christians, if we are honest, I think most of us will confess times in our lives when the well has run dry. And most of us have not done anything near as spiritually challenging as serving the poorest of the poor in Calcutta. But I think it is a near-universal experience among the faithful to have had times when we have felt removed from God, or had a "crisis of faith" (the term the magazine used to describe as the article described Mother Teresa's long sojourn in the spiritual desert).

What comes to light in these excerpts from Teresa is the difference between those who turn from God and those who continue to move forward towards the hope of a resurrection of faith and that is -- even while we are distressed by our circumstances and challenged by our fears and doubt, we also believe that this is part of the very essence of faith. We believe the words Paul writes in Hebrews, "Now faith is the assurance of things hoped for, the conviction of things unseen." And we realize that belief is not real until it is lived out. Put into our lives. Practiced.

I can't imagine what life was like for Teresa. I can't imagine doing what she did without daily assurance that she was being accompanied by the Spirit of God. But despite the apparent fact that she did not feel the Spirit moving, she moved. And she moved in God's name, doing everything to God's glory.

I hope that in examining these letters published against her wishes, her demonstrated faith is what, once again, emerges as Teresa's legacy. She may indeed have had a "crisis" of faith for 66 years. But it was the extraordinary practice of those 66 years in light of her very human struggle that truly instructs.