OUT OF THE MIRY CLAY!

Seattle, WA Beautiful Sunny Day, cool breeze 45 degrees.

In numerous areas of my life, it feels like I'm stuck in the mud. We are in a critical phase of my stem cell transplant where the Medical Team is preparing for the final stages prior to discharge. I have to transition from IV infusions for hydration and medications to totally oral medications. I will have my last Prednisone pill on the 22nd of March and hopefully, along with it, the alleviation of lots of side effects. The Graft vs Host  Disease the Prednisone has held in check keeps peeping its head up to remind me that it is still lurking around like a mouse trying to find a warm home before winter. I have an eruption of skin damage around my Hickman Port. I have four skin fungal sites that we are treating. I am taking pills to reduce the water retention in my lower legs. I test blood sugar levels 4 times a day and take insulin three times a day. I still have an IV infusion here at home a couple hours a day and the list goes on and on. My new attending Physician wants me to have another bone marrow biopsy on Tuesday. His speciality is Myleo Displastic Syndrome, which I had when I first came here, and he wants hard evidence that it is no longer there. Hanna's stem cells should have destroyed and replaced all of my diseased stem cells, but he wants to know for certain. It will be one of the milestones we need to pass to be discharged in the best possible condition. It is a painful and stressful procedure that no one looks forward to having. The skill of the Dr. doing the biopsy makes all the difference in the world. Please pray for a talented and God inspired technician. I continue to lose weight, in spite of eating  a diet that would normally put pounds on your body. I need to avoid sugar and related products, so that must contribute significantly. I have lost 40 lbs since my Transplant and that should level off once I'm off the Prednisone. Hopefully, I won't just gain it all back again, I don't believe that I will. I am weak as a kitten after a few hours of activity, but I keep exercising to maintain muscle strength. In your prayers this week, pray specifically that the Myleo Displastic Syndrome is completely gone and that I can begin to regain some physical strength and stamina.

The emotional and physical impact of my brother Tom's death and dying journey is both inspirational and exhausting. We finally found his medical directives from his house in Wapato. By the grace of God, we followed them exactly as he had directed. I was named to be his Medical Representative and have final say in the length and extent of treatment. It was better that we didn't have that written directive earlier, because it worked out much better for our family to come to a unanimous consensus when decision time arrived. I would not have done much differently than we did, only probably a little sooner. It is a sobering responsibility when someone else gives into your hands the authority to artificially sustain life, or allow nature to take its course. I will take a copy of his Directive to the Harborview Social Worker to put in Tom's permanent file. It will be available to his Medical Team and give them some comfort knowing they ultimately did what he would have wanted them to do. We are in the process of finalizing the Celebration of Tom's Life in Wapato on Memorial Day Weekend. It will include a formal church service, Military Honors, and a community dinner at the American Legion on Saturday, May 28. Most of that is already scheduled and Hanna and I will share in officiating the service at the church. Like many of you, I find myself opening my cell phone and instinctively looking up Tom's number because I want to talk to him about something. Habits die harder than people.

Without the love, support, prayers, cards and compassion of all of you and untold others, we would not only be in the miry clay, but in the quicksand of despair. God is using all of you to hold us together and we will slowly emerge from the depths, but not too quickly. There are lessons to be learned in the pits and caves of life. If we fail to listen to that still small voice of God when everything seems at its worst, we may miss an Elijah like moment when God spoke to him personally in a gentle whisper. God assured him that he was not alone, that there were 7000 other faithful followers of the True God, and here are your marching orders to go forth with your life. I Kings 19. I received an inspired e-mail from a dear friend who knows both my heart and situation the other day. His word to me was that of the vineyard. He has a vision of God doing a significant pruning of my life (vine). Having pruned fruit trees and grapes since high school, I get it.Only those vines that are pruned severely and wisely will produce excellent fruit. God knows what His purposes are in our lives and I am encouraged to anticipate what new and better spiritual fruit will come forth from all this.We will "surthrive" by the Grace of God and together bring glory and praise to God's Name. Robin

VANCOUVER, BRITISH COLUMBIA, CANADA Fall 1974

We worked on the family farm again over the Summer of 1974. We earned enough money to go back to Regent College for my second year of Theological Education at Regent College and receive a Master's in Christian Studies. Kriss had passed her State Board Exams and was licensed as a LPN. However, she didn't have a work visa from the Canadian Government, so she couldn't work as a LPN. She did find an under the table job as a Nanny for a Neuro-Surgeon and his wife, caring for their two children. They were a wonderful christian couple who chose to remain in Canada and provide medical care in their system in lieu of accepting offer after offer from American Medical Centers which would have paid him 5-10 times as much income. You had to admire their devotion to their country and the care of their fellow countrymen. We lived in a basement apartment in the middle of Vancouver, which meant that I still had to commute, but now only 20 minutes to school. I had mastered the vocabulary and methodology of theological studies and did well. To graduate you had to produce a Master's Thesis of original research on a topic approved by your Advisor. I decided to research the Biblical basis of the Equality of Men and Women in Christian Marriage. It was a daunting, yet enlightening process to dig beneath the superficial culturally based assumptions of both the 1st and 20th centuries. I had learned to multi-task and so I used major chapters of my Thesis for the Major Papers of individual classes to great success and even approval of my professors. We developed a rather strange lifestyle. Kriss would get up around 5 am and manually type what I had written out by hand, then at 7am go play Mary Poppins with her kids. I would get up around noon and begin to do research on my Thesis. I had told my Professors that they wouldn't see much of me, but I would submit all my work on time and I would check in with them on a regular basis. Somehow they accepted my offer and knew that I was deeply involved in original research and they wanted to support me in any way that they could. I would study until 4 pm when Kriss got home, we would spend a couple hours together fixing supper and visiting a while. By 8 pm I was back on the clock doing research and occasionally listening to the Vancouver Cannucks Hockey Game in the background and Kriss would finish typing for the day. I would study until 4am. It might sound like a really crazy and unbalanced lifestyle, but it worked so well and so efficiently, that I finished all the requirements for my normal classes and my Thesis three weeks before school was over. We actually took 10 days off and went back to the family farm for some R&R.

Returning to Vancouver, we went through Graduation and looked forward to what God had in store for us in the next chapter of our lives which would include a new born baby that coming September. Now we had the responsibility of parenthood to consider in making decisions concerning our future. Hanna was, is and will always be a precious gift to us, as are all our children. Being given the stewardship of four human lives is probably the most daunting responsibility and privilege any of us is ever given in this life. They are God's children first and always. We do not possess them, nor they us. Just because you have a piano in your home doesn't make you a pianist. Just because you have a biological child doesn't automatically turn you into a competent parent. We prayerfully and fearfully welcomed each child as God's gift and pray that one day we will have proved ourselves worthy of those gifts. Praise be to God for being the Heavenly Parent to our children, when we fell short and were unworthy. One final event occurred just before finishing up at Regent College that would remain with me forever. I had a good friend who was amazingly talented, intelligent, charming, and potentially successful in Theological Studies. He applied and was accepted into a Ph.D. program at one of the most prestigious Theological Schools in England. We had been working across the aisle doing research one evening when he asked:"Want a break from the monotony?" I asked him what he meant and he told me to come over to his desk and look at something that helped him get his mind off of the tedium of research. He threw out a pornographic magazine, which from the cover, you couldn't fail to imagine what was inside. I looked at him and said: "You've got to be kidding, no thanks!" He took some offense at my rejection of his stress-alleviating distraction and we let it pass. He went to England, got his Ph D. in New Testament Studies, returned to a Theological Institution in Canada as a Professor and Administrator, fell in "love" with an employee of that Institution, abandoned his wife and sons, created a scandal within the Institution that caused great harm. I never forgot that moment of temptation and decision when God pulled me out of the miry clay of potential pornographic titillation and addiction. I don't think my friend wanted out of the mud. Moral choices seem so innocent and inconsequential in the moment of time. In reality, one choice in a vulnerable moment can unleash a tsunami of moral and interpersonal destruction beyond imagination. Robin