Comfort and Affliction

I don't believe that there is any feeling or experience better than opening up the Scriptures and realizing that God is speaking directly to you. He spoke this morning. I've been reading the Psalms but also started 2 Corinthians this morning. The first part of chapter 1 seems extremely relevant to us right now.

"Blessed be the God and Father of our Lord Jesus Christ, the Father of mercies and God of all comfort, who comforts us in all our affliction so that we will be able to comfort those who are in any affliction with the comfort with which we ourselves are comforted by God. For just as the suffering of Christ are ours in abundance, so also our comfort is abundant through Christ... Indeed we (Paul and Timothy) had the sentence of death within ourselves so that we would not trust in ourselves, but in God who raises the dead; who delivered us from so great a death, and will deliver us, He on whom we have set our hope."

We have truly been comforted by all of you, who obviously have been comforted by God in your own struggles. We hope to comfort others as we struggle through this affliction ourselves, and have been blessed to do so already in some small ways. God loves to have us be utterly dependent upon Him, seeking hope from no other source but Him. He alone deserves to be the object of our hope.

Liza is currently resting. Although she did not sleep well last night, today she has been "unable to stay awake." That's a great thing and the kids and I will try to maintain and environment conducive to more sleep as best we can. She's also been trying to space out her meds and even wean herself off them because of some of the negative side effects that have been showing up. This of course does not mute the pain as much as it did last week, so she's been in a fragile way pain-wise. However, last night it was just the four Polloks and it was actually quite good. I think the kids enjoyed just being us again. Liza watched a lot from her chair as we wrestled and played hide-n-seek. She smiled a bit in between the grimaces. Again, I think we're seeing slow progress, slow...painful...progress. Thanks for all your prayers and thoughts.