Lift Up Your Hearts!

We are now in the season of the church year called Lent.  A season of self-denial and repentance, it is paradoxically one of my favorite seasons—most likely because I love the Lenten section of our hymnal.  So many great hymns.  I also like it because I get to contribute to our church's Lenten Devotional, in which various church people write a very short meditation on an assigned Bible verse.  Since my day (March 7) has now passed, I feel free to share it here.

Those who are well have no need of a physician, but those who are sick.  (Matthew 9:12)

Thus Jesus responded when the Pharisees questioned His socializing with society’s outcasts. Quoting Hosea 6, He continued: Go and learn what this means, “I desire mercy, and not sacrifice.” The sick and suffering will seek out a doctor, but those who are outwardly healthy and strong feel no such need. The obvious sinners knew their low estate and came to Jesus for help. The Pharisees, confident in their own righteousness, came to Jesus to criticize. Jesus gave His time to the people who were open to healing. To the Pharisees, whom He also loved, He presented a challenge: Perhaps the Hosea passage would reveal God’s greater standards, that they might see with their eyes, hear with their ears, understand with their hearts and turn, and [He] would heal them (Matthew 13:15).

An excerpt from Brandon Sanderson's novel, Warbreaker (pp. 490-491 in the hardcover version). It seems fitting for my Heroes series.

Vasher shrugged in the darkness. “Priests are always easy to blame. They make convenient scapegoats—after all, anyone with a strong faith different from your own must either be a crazy zealot or a lying manipulator.”

Vivenna flushed yet again.

Vasher stopped in the street, then turned to her. “I’m sorry,” he said. “I didn’t mean to say it that way.” He cursed, turning and walking again. “I told you I’m no good at this.”

“It’s all right,” she said. “I’m getting used to it.”

He nodded in the darkness, seeming distracted.

He is a good man, she thought. Or, at least, an earnest man trying to be good. A part of her felt foolish for making yet another judgment.

Yet she knew she couldn’t live—couldn’t interact—without making some judgments. So she judged Vasher. Not as she’d judged Denth, who had said amusing things and given her what she’d expected to see. She judged Vasher by what she had seen him do. Cry when he saw a child being held captive. Return that child to her father, his only reward an opportunity to make a rough plea for peace. Living with barely any money, dedicating himself to preventing a war.

He was rough. He was brutal. He had a terrible temper. But he was a good man. And, walking beside him, she felt safe for the first time in weeks.

Here's an update on Grace's situation after the meeting with all the doctors, to clarify everything about the neurofibroma in her ear, and the next steps to take.

Ha! Just kidding.

The great news is that Grace is still a bright, happy, joyful, competent, and apparently healthy three-year-old.

But the appointment was, shall we say, less than stellar. Here's Heather's report, taken from their website:

This is my memory's summary of Jon's report to me: A lot of time for not a lot of progress. Education/information, but no decisions. The ENT was not experienced, so they want her to see the adult ENT because that person knows more. They also want to do a CT scan before deciding on treatment plans. They think from the MRI that it is a very small fibroma, but they want to check. Turns out the medicine for reducing the fibromas has terrible side effects and you have to take it for the rest of your life. So we want to delay that as much as we can, hopefully avoid it forever. They want to know if it is affecting how her bones are growing. If not, they will probably do nothing. If so, Jon is wondering if surgery is better, because it's so near the surface and so small. But he didn't understand why she didn't get the CT scan today [as scheduled], because it's just delaying treatment decisions. I say it's to give our prayers more time to work to just reduce it without medical intervention. Her hearing loss was less than in November. The audiologist wants to give her a hearing aid, which might be fine. Her eardrum is funny-shaped. 

When I asked about the hearing aid, Heather explained, "The thing about the hearing aid was for balance I think, and the audio "depth perception," and for keeping those brain pathways from dying off. But it did not appear to be very bad. It would be like getting weak prescription glasses.

So, prayers for wisdom, please, for all concerned, and especially that the neurofibroma will continue to shrink, and disappear altogether. Thank you all for hanging in there with Grace and her family.

I have observed something interesting about buying eggs these days.

The painful increase in the price of eggs is directly driven by the mass-slaughter of chickens, which I'm certain will turn out to have been both useless and harmful to our country's economy, agriculture, and citizens. Much as our COVID response was, though hopefully on a lesser scale.

But perhaps some good may come of it. I've noticed that on our grocery shelves, the "better" eggs—the ones labelled local, organic, cage-free, pastured, and other such indications of (relatively) small operations—are flying off the shelves. I believe this is less because American shoppers have suddenly become more interested in better farming practices, but because the prices are lower. Why would that be? Why would the higher-end eggs actually cost less than those that are factory-farmed? Is this a temporary glitch in the system, or have farms with more humane practices been significantly less impacted by the current panic?

I have two hopes for good things that could happen in response:

• Federal, state, and local governments will recognize the value of healthier, smaller, farming practices, and stop putting onerous regulations on them. Regulatory burdens that are necessary for industrial-style agriculture are irrelevant to small and local farms, and are killing them off—to the benefit, of course, of said industrial agriculture, as it leaves consumers with no choice but to buy mass-produced food. If we truly value America's health, promoting food freedom would be a great start.
• One benefit that came out of the COVID shutdown debacle was that millions of families were introduced to the joys of home education who had never before considered it. I'm hoping that being forced by economics to sample better eggs will encourage more Americans to appreciate the kind of eggs that Europeans take for granted. And maybe over-zealous homeowners associations will start recognizing the value of backyard chickens!

It's time for a re-evaluation of Lift Up Your Hearts!—and some changes.

I've been ruminating on this for a long time. For years, really. A year and a half ago I published Changes, my first attempt at bringing my blog dreams more in line with reality, but I'd been thinking about it long before that.

Change is not something I generally seek out, particularly if things are working "well enough." I'd much rather repair a car/appliance/computer/article of clothing/philosophy that is still functional than toss it and obtain the latest and greatest model. My phone is a Galaxy S9 and years ago passed the point where I could get anything reasonable in trade for it. It's reaching the point where I should probably upgrade, but I resist even thinking about that. My Lenovo T470 computer happily runs Windows 10, and there's no reason I should get a new one—except that Microsoft will soon drop Windows 10 support, and the computer is too old to run Windows 11.

I've stayed with certain churches longer than was healthy, and certain music teachers when I should have moved on.

I'm not saying this is entirely a bad thing. Porter and I recently celebrated our 50th wedding anniversary, in part a testament to the realization that it would be foolish to climb a difficult and dangerous fence on the highly unlikely chance that the grass might possibly be greener on the other side.

Lesser decisions, however, have little need for such permanance, and it's time for another change to my blog: I'm disabling comments.

That doesn't sound like a very big thing; after all, I hardly get any comments anyway—not ones that you can see. The signal-to-noise ratio is abysmal: The spammers and trolls have a lot to say, and I'm tired of dealing with them—and that's just the ones that get through the spam filter. There are better uses of bandwidth, not to mention my time and mental energy. I might put up with it if my posts generated the kind of wide-ranging, mutually-supportive back-and-forth discussions of events and ideas that I have always enjoyed, but it's time to be honest and acknowledge that they rarely do. I no longer have the appetite for debate that I once did—or perhaps I've never liked the confrontational style that many people seem to thrive on, and the kind of discussion I prefer is getting rarer.

A few people comment on the blog; others contact me privately if they have something to say. E-mail contact will remain an option, and most of what I write will continue to be cross-posted on Facebook. Unless I finally give up on that platform as well; who knows? I will miss those whose occasional comments encourage me that yes, someone is reading.

I will keep comments enabled for some categories, such as Pray for Grace and Genealogy, which are most likely to attract curious and helpful interactions. And I may occasionally open comments for other posts, when it seems warranted.

I'm not giving up on the blog itself, that's for sure. I've been at this for a quarter of a century, and this post will be number 3500! I see no reason to stop, and many reasons to continue. For myself, for those who read my posts because they find information or encouragement or something else of value, and for those who might find value here in the future, even if they aren't right now in a place to appreciate it. If it were helpful only to me, I would still find it worth my time and effort to publish my thoughts—and I know there are others who like what I write.

But in order for my efforts to continue to be fun and productive, I need to keep my headspace clean and focused. Not having to deal with comments—whether they are scammers trying to sell me products for body parts I don't have, or random people asking me to publish their own articles, or anything that tempts me to get involved in arguments—should help.

I may change my mind again sometime, but this is what I need to do for now.

I feel lighter already.