Irene Kuvakas - July 1, 1927 to Oct 25 2009

My mom passed away a few weeks ago. She had been struggling for a while. Not physically, but mentally. Mom wasn't mentally ill, not in the sense most folks would think. She was having a hard time remembering things. At first, it was conversations she had taken part in a few days prior. As things began to progress, it became events and chats that had happened more recently.

She was able to handle her daily routine pretty well. It was the unexpected things that cropped up in her day that would cause her some distress and discomfort. She would enjoy visits from me or Kelly but they were hard on her because they threw her daily schedule into disarray. She tried to hide it because she enjoyed the visits so much but they were hard on her nonetheless.

Earlier in their lives, Mom and Dad were, literally inseparable. That Mom did so well after Dad passed away in 1990 surprised all of us. Dad doted over her and managed their affairs, mostly by himself. They loved each other desperately and beautifully. I knew that his passing would be very hard on her and it was....on all of us. But Mom began to demonstrate a resilience and determination that I never had seen in her before. She began making her own decisions and they were good ones. She integrated into a series of social groups in the local churches and made quick and easy friends with a number of the women who attended them.

As Mom got older, she remained active and vital. In spite of our repeated encouragements to move to Virginia, she wanted to stay in Youngstown, Ohio. Other than 3 short years in Florida, Mom spent her entire life in Youngstown. While I saw it as a place to escape from, Mom saw it as her hometown made more so by Dad's going to be with the Lord. She was familiar with it and she was comfortable there. She loved me and our family as deeply as she did Dad. I know there were times she wanted us closer but being where they had met and grew together meant so much to her, she could never leave.

Not too long ago, Mom fell down at home. Her primary caregiver my cousin Jimmy (an angel in every respect, their picture is below), got her to the hospital right away. She had not seriously injured herself but a change had occurred. The delicate line between reality and Mom's memories began to blur. The longer she stayed in the hospital, the more vague that line got.

The Doctors think Mom had a series of small strokes during that time. That's when the mental struggle escalated and her memory began to get somewhat muddled.

As Mom's mind fought to keep the past separated from the present, the events and people she remembered were an amazing testimony to what she held most dear. She remembered her family. all of them. For a few, short days, she was in the presence of all of them, from our children, Ruth and Jason, to her parents and her father-in-law. Some of these beautiful people have been dead for almost 50 years but they were, for a short time, reunited in Mom's mind as she remembered them and enjoyed their company for one last, happy family reunion. "I saw Mom today." she would say. Or, "Pop (her father-in-law) was here. I would like to go home to Bentley Avenue."

Towards the end, when it became clear Mom was failing, we stopped trying to tell her that the house on Bentley Avenue was torn down 30 years ago and that Pop died 40 years ago. She was content and happy. Her only distress would rise up when she would realize she was in a strange hospital room surrounded by people she didn't know.

Trying to function with a cloudy memory was hard on Mom. She would forget that she wasn't fully able to walk and try to get around on her own. About three weeks ago, Mom took a fall and broke her leg. During the operation to repair the fracture, she had another stroke and partial paralysis set in. Along with it came feeding tubes and difficulty talking. Kelly was with her during the last conversation I had with her. It was on the phone. All she could manage to say was, "I love you. "

Mom slipped peacefully and quietly into the presence of the Lord shortly after 3:00 on Sunday, Oct 25. Two days prior, Kelly got to share the gospel with her and Mom was lucid enough to affirm her faith and trust in the Lord......a gift from God to those of us she left behind.

It was harder than I thought it would be. Mom was struggling and her passing is a blessing in every way. But it's still painful. I still find myself, almost hourly, thinking about Youngstown and thinking about calling Mom.

It was this way with Dad too. I've come to realize that you never really get over it...you just learn to live with it. Kelly and I are praising the Lord that, in his mercy, He took Mom home. We're also thankful that He will sustain us through our time of grief and that "....joy comes in the morning." Death is part of life. For those that believe in Jesus Christ and have received Him as Lord and Savior, it's not final....it's the next step closer to God.

It may be a while, but we'll see you again, Mom. We miss you.

What to Do When You Just Don't Feel Like It.....

(Author: Jon Bloom)

Did you wake up not feeling like reading your Bible and praying? How many times today have you had to battle not feeling like doing things you know would be good for you?

While it's true that this is our indwelling sin that we must repent of and fight against, there's more going on.

Think about this strange pattern that occurs over and over in just about every area of life:

• Good food requires discipline to prepare and eat while junk food tends to be the most tasty, addictive, and convenient.
• Keeping the body healthy and strong requires frequent deliberate discomfort while it only takes constant comfort to go to pot.
• You have to make yourself pick up that nourishing theological book while watching a movie can feel so inviting.
• You frequently have to force yourself to get to devotions and prayer while sleeping, reading the sports, and checking Facebook seems effortless.
• To play beautiful music requires thousands of hours of tedious practice.
• To excel in sports requires monotonous drills ad nauseum.
• It takes years and years of schooling just to make certain opportunities possible.
• This goes on and on.

The pattern is this: the greater joys are obtained through struggle and pain, while brief, unsatisfying, and often destructive joys are right at our fingertips. Why is this?

Because, in great mercy, God is showing us everywhere, in things that are just shadows of heavenly things, that there is a great reward for those who struggle through (Hebrews 10:32-35). He is reminding us repeatedly each day to walk by faith and not by sight (2 Corinthians 5:7).

Each struggle is an invitation by God to follow in the footsteps of his Son, "who for the joy that was set before him endured the cross, despising the shame, and is seated at the right hand of the throne of God" (Hebrews 12:2).

Those who are spiritually blind only see futility in these things. But for those who have eyes to see, God has woven hope (faith in future grace) right into the futility of creation (Romans 8:20-21). Each struggle is a pointer saying, "Look! Look to the real Joy set before you!"

So when you don't feel like doing what you know is best for you, take heart and don't give in. Your Father is pointing you to the reward he has planned for all who endure to the end (Matthew 24:13).

For this light momentary affliction is preparing for us an eternal weight of glory beyond all comparison, as we look not to the things that are seen but to the things that are unseen. For the things that are seen are transient, but the things that are unseen are eternal. (2 Corinthians 4:17-18)

God of all Things, Joy and Sorrow, Peace and Pain

My sincere apologies, an earlier un-edited version of this posting inadvertently displayed the name of the baby Gary is holding in the picture above in error. Gary is feeding Jacob Andrew.

Our great God is a God of extremes. He can move galaxies around just by waving His fingers. Yet, he knows when something as small as a sparrow falls out of the air. He is the alpha and the omega....and all things in between as well.

We had a chance to experience two of God's extremes last night.

Kimberly Hunt has been pregnant with twins for almost eight months. The news, when they got it, was stunning and awesome at the same time. The pregnancy has not been without its problems. We have all been praying that Kimberly would not go into labor before Oct 12, the earliest date the Doctors felt comfortable taking the babies.

God graciously answered that prayer.

Things have gone well for Kimberly since that date. But yesterday afternoon, she was feeling dizzy and her vision got blurry. She called her precious and wise mother, Donna who encouraged her to call her Doctor immediately. The Doctor sent her to the emergency room "as a precaution". A sonogram raised some concerns. Shortly after that, the Doctors revealed to Gary and Kimberly that they were not detecting a heartbeat nor any other activity for one of the babies. Prayer requests immediately went out. Everyone prayed for healing and a miracle. We had seen it before, when their beautiful and now healthy son, Garrison was born. Garrison was not given much chance to survive. God worked a mighty miracle and today, Garrison is normal, active and vital in spite of the Doctor's grave warnings that he would never be so.

God did not answer our prayers this evening...at least not the way we had hoped He would. the Doctors told this godly and beautiful coouple that one of their babies was no longer alive.

After a mighty time of prayer and tears in the labor room. After I once again saw the Hunts, Jameses and Hostetters give us a schooling on what true faith and trust in God is, Jacob Andrew Hunt was born a healthy, 9 lb, 8 oz baby, kicking and screaming and trying to figure out what this new world was all about. His twin brother, John Paul Hunt, was ushered immediately into the presence of the Lord. We managed to snap some pictures of Gary, the nurse and baby Jacob though the waiting room window:




















Jacob moments after he was born and Dad gets to dote over his baby boy


"Joy comes in the morning". It's 12:08 AM

I still find it difficult to describe what was happening in that waiting room as they held Jacob up to the window. There were about 20 of us there, each one if us laughing and crying at the same time. God was putting His extremes of life on display right before our eyes. By His unfathomable grace and mercy, He took one home with Him and sent one home with us at the same time. It was an arrow to our hearts but, at the same time we saw the extremes, the alpha and the omega. We were all acutely aware of the blessing God had given us. We were all acutely aware of how fragile a gift life is. And we were all acutely aware that the only hope we have in anything beyond this earth is in our sovereign, wise and loving God who promises us that we will one day worship next to our little brother John Paul in heaven.

We already miss little John. But our grief is only at our temporary separation from John Paul, not our sadness for him. He's in the best possible place. God made him "fearfully and wonderfully'...absolutely perfect for God's absolutely perfect plan for him. God made him to live in heaven, not here on this earth. God made Jacob Andrew to live here with us. Both plans are a blessing. One is easy to understand. The other will take some time.

God is wise, wonderful, loving and holy. We praise God, even in our grief, that John Paul is with Him right now.

Why does He do things this way? Why is He such a God of extremes?....So we can put our faith on display to the world. So they can see the hope that is in us. So they can see, in us, eternity and a promise for tomorrow. Our testimony is not that we as Christians have no problems or obstacles in life. Our testimony is that we have a way to cope with them. Our pain and grief have meaning and our hope has a sure foundation. This family handled a dark hour by lifting it up to God and asking Him to have His way with them, and their baby. You just watch what God does with that kind of commitment.

Isaiah 61
1 The Spirit of the Sovereign Lord is on me,

because the Lord has anointed me

to preach good news to the poor.

He has sent me to bind up the brokenhearted,

to proclaim freedom for the captives

and release from darkness for the prisoners,

² to proclaim the year of the Lord’s favor

and the day of vengeance of our God,

to comfort all who mourn,

³ and provide for those who grieve in Zion—

to bestow on them a crown of beauty

instead of ashes,

the oil of gladness

instead of mourning,

and a garment of praise

instead of a spirit of despair.

The Leading of the Holy Spirit vs the Authority of the Word

From John Piper's blog today. This is a reminder of the teaching we heard a few weeks back, while we were in Jude, that you had better be 100% accurate and precise when you claim to be speaking under the inspiration of the holy, perfect and inerrant Holy Spirit. Any error in what you say, any tainting of what the Holy Spirit says by your own filters or preconceptions can have devastating consequences for you and those who listen to you:

The following is an edited transcript of the audio.

What would you say to someone who feels like the Spirit's leading has authority over Scripture? I would take them to 1 Corinthians 12-14 where the whole issue of prophecy and speaking in tongues is at stake. And I would show them how the apostle Paul relates his authority to those spiritual gifts. Because Paul acknowledges that the Spirit can lead. And he acknowledges that there is such a thing as speaking in tongues. And he acknowledges that there is such a thing as a prophetic gifting by which God may bring something to mind that somebody needs at that very moment that would penetrate their hearts in ways that you wouldn't any other way. He acknowledges all of that, and then he puts it all under his authority. He says, "I say this; and if you judge otherwise, you are not recognized." Whoa! What about the Holy Spirit, excuse me? And Paul would say, "I'm speaking by the inspiration of the Holy Spirit." The apostles viewed their teaching as from God in an authoritative, inerrant way. All of the spiritual gifts are from God in a non-authoritative, non-inerrant way, and therefore always subordinate to the inspired word of God. That's what I would do first is take them there. A supplementary thing I might do is just tell them some stories about horrific mistakes people have made, and how lives have been deeply damaged by people who are absolutely sure they heard from God, and then they hurt people very badly because it didn't turn out the way that they thought it might.

Same Sex Marriage and Pres. Obama

"You will see a time in which we as a nation finally recognize relationships between two men or two women as just as real and admirable as relationships between a man and a woman."
Pres. Barack Obama to the Human Rights Campaign's 13th Annual Dinner, Oct 10, 2009.

This is an historic and hugely monumental statement for the President to make. It's a reflection of where we as a country are headed and a graphic depiction of how severely the moral decline of the USA is impacting every area of our society.

You can see the full text of Pres. Obama's speech here.

Al Mohler addresses this event in a poignant and significant posting on his blog today. You can read that post here.

I know the knee-jerk reaction to this within the conservative Christian community will be protest and outrage. Yet, the godly response should be to ramp up our intercession for the leaders of our country, crying out to God to have mercy on them and spare us,as a country, from His wrath.

I think it's time that the people of the United States abandon the notion that we are, somehow in spite of all the evidence, God's 'other chosen people' just because we have a relationship with Israel, just because a precious few of our founders were actually Christians and just because churches are allowed to function freely. None of this will spare our country from God's judgment. None of this will buy us a 'pass' for living lives of blasphemy and rebellion against a holy and just God.

The church's part, our part, in all this is prayer, folks. As His people, our obligation is; to pray for those who rule over us, to be light in a darkened world, to show the love of Christ to.....sinners! The Bible never tells us to rise up against them nor to judge them. That's God's job.

It may be closer than we think.